The Stane street : a monograph

ST "I

lifc' \,

B STANE STREET

H. BELLOC

THE OLD ROAD

By HILAIRE BELLOC

With a Photogravure Frontispiece and 16 Fttll-

page Illtistrations by William Hyde, a Map

and Route Guides in the Text

Demy 8vo

NEW EDITION

7s. 6d. net

THE ATHBNJSUM says:-

" We welcome the re-appearance
of a lively and delightful book oi
travel in England which is remark-
able for Its power of reconstructing
old days and ways."

THE IGKNIELD WAY

BY EDWARD THOMAS
ILLUSTRATED BY A. E. COLLINS

UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME

LONDON
CONSTABLE & COMPANY LTD.

THE STANE STREET

THE STANE STREET

A MONOGRAPH

BY

HILAIRE BELLOC

ILLUSTRATED BY WILLIAM HYDE

LONDON
CONSTABLE & COMPANY LTD.

1913

MAY 1 4 1935

Printed in Great Britain by

BALLANTYNE, HANSON <&-• Co. LTD.

at Paul's Work, Edinburgh

TO <•'"•'
LORD LUCAS

CONTENTS

PART I
THE ROMAN ROAD IN BRITAIN

PAGE

L-IV 3-43

PART II

THE PARTICULAR CASE OF THE
STANE STREET

I. THE LINE OP THE ROAD .... 50
II. THE ALIGNMENTS 67

A. THE FIRST LIMB. FROM CHIOHESTER

EAST GATE TO PULBOROUGH BRIDGE 87

B. THE LIMB FROM PULBOROUGH BRIDGE

TO LEITH HILL .... 93

C. THE LIMB FROM LEITH HILL TO JUNIPER

HILL (ALSO CALLED JUNIPER WOOD
HILL) . . . . . .100

D. THE FOURTH LIMB, FROM JUNIPER

HILL TO LONDON BRIDGE . 106

vli

viii CONTENTS

PAGE

III. THE CAMPS OR MANSIONES . . . . 114

IV. THE HISTORICAL CHARACTER OF THE ROAD 140
V. THE MODERN DIVERGENCES . . .163

PART III
DETAILS OF THE ROAD

A. FROM CHICHESTER TO HARDHAM CAMP . 211

B. FROM HARDHAM CAMP TO ALFOLDEAN BRIDGE 241

C. FROM ALFOLDEAN BRIDGE TO DORKING . 251

D. FROM DORKING TO MERTON ABBEY . . 266

E. FROM MERTON ABBEY TO LONDON BRIDGE . 280

NOTE A. — ON THE ALIGNMENT FROM LEATHER-
HEAD DOWNS TO OLD LONDON BRIDGE . 283
NOTE B.— THE PARALLEL OF THE PORT WAY . 288

INDEX ... 295

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

THE REDLANDS. MOONRISE . . Frontispiece

FACING PAGE

CATHEDRAL AND CROSS, CHICHESTER ... 32

LONDON BRIDGE AND THE THAMES ... 52
THE WEALD OF SUSSEX FROM THE SHOULDER OF

LEITH HILL 70

BIGNOR HILL (GUMBER CORNER) LOOKING TOWARDS

PULBOROUGH 90

THE GRAND STAND, EPSOM RACECOURSE . .110

ALFOLDEAN BRIDGE 128

OCKLEY GREEN AND THE STANE STREET . .154
THE RUINED MILL, HALNACKER DOWN (THE

"SEA PLAIN" BELOW) 176

THE VALE OF DORKING FROM Box HILL . . 200
BOXGROVE ABBEY RUINS AND CHURCH . .216
THE STANE STREET ON LONG DOWN (LOOKING

SOUTH-EAST, WITH " SEA PLAIN " IN DISTANCE) 226

PULBOROUGH BRIDGE AND THE RIVER ARUN . 242

THE TOWER, LEITH HILL 260

THE BANK OF THE WANDLE AT MERTON ABBEY

(WATERCRESS BEDS) 276

HIGH STREET, CLAPHAM 280

x LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

MAPS

PAGE

Six ROMAN WATS CONVERGING ON CIRENCESTER . 23

SKETCH MAP, FIG. 1 39

„ »i » 2 41

» » » 3 59

,, » * 75

„ „ 5 76

,, „ 6 89

„ „ „ 7 ..... 92

» „ 8 95

„ „ „ 9 ..... 99

„ ,, 10 103

„ „ 11 107

„ „ 12 112

„ „ 13 . . . 131

„ „ 14 . 137

„ ,, 15 179

„ „ 16 182

„ „ 17 193

„ „ 18 197

THE STANE STREET THROUGH DORKING GAP . 199

SKETCH MAP, FIG. 19 ... . 205

„ „ 20 263

MAP OF STANE STREET Folder at end

PART I

THE ROMAN ROAD IN BRITAIN

THE STANE STREET

PART I

THE ROMAN ROAD IN BRITAIN

THE foundation of England is a Roman
foundation, as is, indeed, the foundation of
all the West. Once beyond that fringe of
ancient city-states which bordered all the
Mediterranean, and whose origins are older
than known history, the civilisation of Bar-
bary as of Gaul, of Iberia as of the Ger-
manies, of Britain as of the Netherlands, is
a Roman thing; nor is it possible to prove
one institution or one inherited handling of
material things to have descended to us
from the outer barbarism.

This Roman civilisation was everywhere
slowly transformed, and proceeded from what

4 THE STANE STREET

we may call its antique or pagan origins, to
what we now have as modern Europe.

It is impossible to point to any date or
period which separates the Roman advent
of our culture from its present phase, but the
chief mark of Europe, which is its religion,
dates its origin from the Incarnation of Our
Lord : that is, about half a century after the
Roman occupation of Gaul, and as much
before the Roman occupation of Britain.
Coincident, therefore, in the West, with
the era by which we date our years, is the
universal prevalence of a Roman order, and
during all those twenty centuries our things
and our ideas throughout all changes have
preserved their identity and have remained in
substance the same.

Nevertheless, it is historically convenient
to speak of certain things in Gaul or Britain,
the Germanics or Spain, as in a special and
older way " Roman." We talk of a " Roman "
road, a " Roman " bridge, " Roman " tiles, &c.,
and we mean by such a term the work of the
first four or five centuries.

The Roman order in the united civilisation
of the Western Empire was continually dis-
turbed by civil war and occasionally by

THE ROMAN ROAD IN BRITAIN 5

barbaric invasions. More important than
either of these as a factor of change was
the internal transformation of the army
upon which that civilisation reposed. This
institution, from originally free and indigen-
ous, became as to its personnel largely servile
in origin and barbaric in blood. Its most active
portion grew to be auxiliaries and later allies
or "federates" serving under tribal chiefs,
who ultimately assumed local executive powers
and developed into kinglets. These, though
they continued to regard Rome as their head,
at once controlled local Government, and, by
their inefficiency, caused it, through no desire
of their own, to grow more and more inde-
pendent of the central power. To this main
cause of disintegration a multitude of other
causes — the exhaustion of the mines, perhaps
depopulation, certainly disease — contributed.
Our civilisation fell on its material side into
a phase of decay, and the outward mani-
festation of this misfortune took a precise
historical form. The central Government of
the emperors slowly ceased to be effective.
It was never overthrown, it was never
denied ; but it faded out of real politics, and
slowly, unconsciously, of no set purpose,

6 THE STANE STREET

local Governments took its place. These
Governments were administrated, as I have
said, very commonly by the chiefs of the
auxiliary and " federate " 1 forces in the army
(hence the terms "king of the Franks," "of
the Goths," &c.) ; but these in turn were
socially dependent upon those immensely
wealthy landowners, principally Italian,
Gallic, Iberian, or British in descent, whose
monopoly of the means of production was
the mark of the period, and whose power was
the outstanding political mark of the Dark
Ages.

All this great change, which transformed
the originally active and highly centralised
civilisation of the early centuries into the
local, dulled, autonomous, and aristocratic
society of the Dark Ages, had its turning-
point in the fifth century.

From the entry, with the sixth century,
into the Dark Ages, it is provable that no

Upon the exact meaning of this word . " Foederati n
discussion still turns, for it is a principal criterion of the
decline. I have no room to examine it in so slight an essay.
It must be sufficient to say that the " Federates," though a
true part of the Roman army, seem to have been more
autonomous and more domestically organised under here-
ditary chiefs than the " Auxiliaries."

THE ROMAN ROAD IN BRITAIN 7

more great public works were undertaken in
the Gauls. Repairs — sometimes on a great
scale — are discoverable in the seventh century,
and even in the eighth,1 but Rome no longer
ruled or made. Pillaging and savage hordes,
seafaring pirates and wanderers from over
the border, though few in number, could
molest the civilised inhabitants of the
frontiers in a manner if not graver, at least
more permanent than that of the earlier
barbarians. The whole body of civilisation
had weakened and grown old.

It is on this account that we distinguish
verbally between the Imperial Government of
the first four centuries and what survived
of it into the fifth, and the half-barbarous
Governments succeeding it in the North and
West during the next 500 years. The earlier
undertakings, which are stamped everywhere
with the mark of vigorous, lively, and united
administration and of high material powers,
we call Roman. Not, I repeat, because any
line of division can be established between

1 E.g. the great Roman roads of Northern Gaul appear
from tradition to have been thoroughly restored in one great
effort more than a century after the disappearance of the
Imperial coinage.

8 THE STANE STREET

the origins and the later developments of our
civilisation, but as a convenient term whereby
to denote the particular type of early public
works in question.

II

The material evidences of our common
Roman foundation are, in some departments
of them, better preserved in the province
of Britain than in any other part of the
Imperial West.

In the matter of buildings we are less
fortunate than Gaul or even the Germanics :
far less than Spain or Africa. But in certain
matters we have superiority over any other
province of the Empire in our relics of Im-
perial times, and these are particularly hoards
of money and roads.

The reason that this type of " Roman
remains" stands out in Britain more than
in the other provinces, is the same as that
which has destroyed so much of Roman build-
ings, and is twofold : it is, in part, the fact
that Britain was the remotest province of
the West : in part, the fact that the barbaric

THE ROMAN ROAD IN BRITAIN 9

raids which followed the breakdown of cen-
tral authority were, if not more severe as
wars, at least of more destructive effect here
than elsewhere.

Each of these two things is connected with
the other. It was the remoteness of Britain
and its separation by the sea which caused
it to be so early and destructively attacked
by the pillage of barbarians — Irish, Caledonian,
German, roaming slaves escaped, &c. — and its
remoteness also which lessened the import-
ance of its Roman buildings. The distance
and isolation of Britain presumably left that
province with less magnificent monuments
than those of the Continent and of Africa,
while the same distance and isolation left
it open to so many and such ruinous raids.

At any rate, early in the story of the
central power's decline, Britain was subjected
to incursions from the barbaric inhabitants
of Ireland and of Scotland, and even to
raids led by pirates from across the sea ;
from Frisia and from what is now the junction
of Denmark with the German Empire, and
from the mouth of the Elbe and from the
mouth of the Weser ; with these must cer-
tainly have been mixed, as in the case of

10 THE STANE STREET

the Vandals, a very large proportion of the
internal wreckage of society, the escaped
slaves, the brigands of heath and woodland,
the ruined men.

The Roman Empire stretched its authority
along the North Sea coast of the Continent
as far as the last mouths of the Rhine :
Utrecht was perhaps its outpost. North and
east of that, the flat and shallow shore man-
aged to raise even from the sparse inhabi-
tants of its poor soil, crews of pirates who
harried Britain in company with the bar-
barians from beyond the Irish Channel, the
barbarians from beyond the limits of the
Empire on the Clyde, and the hungry enemies
of society within.

It was in the beginning of the fifth century
that certainly the major part of the Roman
regulars left Britain for a Continental cam-
paign from which perhaps they were scheduled
to return, but from which, as a fact, they
did not. Of their many departures from this
island upon Continental expeditions this was
the last. An army had often left Britain
before at the summons of the central Govern-
ment or a usurper. It may be that such
expeditions had often emptied the garrison

THE ROMAN ROAD IN BRITAIN 11

of the island. But hitherto they had come
back. After the first years of the fifth cen-
tury no Roman regulars returned to this
island, though many may have remained
in it. A generation later, in the midst of
the fifth century, the barbaric raids upon
civilised Britain grew serious : somewhere
about 450, if tradition (though slight and
confused) be any guide, the pressure began to
be incessant. What happened during the
next 150 years we shall never know. It is
blotted out of history, save for a few legends
and old fables. If we look for documents, we
find exactly one very brief clerical rhapsody
contemporary indeed, but little more than
a denunciatory sermon in character, and as
a guide to what came before it, almost as
unreliable as the much later romances of
"Hengist" and "Horsa" and the rest.

At any rate, Roman civilisation upon the
southern and eastern shores of Britain slowly
fell and fell until it had sunk to a depth
far lower than was to be discovered in
neighbouring Gaul and rather resembling the
contemporary state of the Netherlands.

Now, Britain is an island ; and the com-
munications between it and the world lay

12 THE STANE STREET

precisely through these southern and eastern
shores which the barbarian had ruined.
Britain was "cut off" even more thoroughly
than Africa. Its moral life quickly starved
and its supply of moral sustenance was
checked. That the barbarians were few and
held but a narrow belt of sea coast was no miti-
gation of the disaster, for the little those few
held constituted the very gates of the province.
Popular dialects, Celtic in the west, Teutonic
in the east, replaced the Roman official tongue.
We know that the Church survived, though
mutilated, in the west of the island: on the
eastern shore and even up the Thames valley
it seems to have disappeared. The Roman
order, the Roman power of building and
devising, failed, if not more suddenly, more
thoroughly in Britain than in any other
province. The towns must have survived ;
but, as everywhere, the contemporary record
of them is lost, and in general, from
the departure of St. Germanus in 447 A.D.
to the landing of St. Augustine, precisely
150 years later, the history of Britain is
blank.

When positive history and contemporary
records return, which is not until the end

THE ROMAN ROAD IN BRITAIN 13

of the sixth or the beginning of the seventh
century, we have the impression of a province
fallen into an anarchy far more complete
than the contemporary societies of Europe,
and the Faith itself had to be laboriously
reintroduced into the eastern littoral belt,
reformed elsewhere, before Britain could take
its place again as a member of the European
family.

Now, the first effect of all those catas-
trophes must have been to destroy more
buildings and other easily destroyable things
in Britain than on the Continent. But there
was to this misfortune a compensating advan-
tage for history, and the same barbarism which
ruined what was destroyable, fossilised, as
it were, what was resistant to mere violence
and loot. The evidence for roads, the great
system of communications, especially bene-
fited by a misfortune that had arrested the
continuous activity of civilisation.

In the case of the British roads, there was
none of that slow if declining repair, possibly
even that extension of the road system, which
Gaul seems to have preserved for some time
after the fall of the central Government.
The Roman roads of Gaul, of Lower and

14 THE STANE STREET

Upper Germany, still more of Italy, are in
our day like a palimpsest. Often we cannot
be certain of the original Roman direction :
more commonly it has been modified or
obliterated by continuous use and its accom-
panying changes. But in Britain the end
of this Roman work was left, as it were, fresh
from the workshop : the interruption in its
use preserved it by the very accident which
destroyed so much other contemporary work
around.

Ill

The Roman road, then, has been preserved
in this country in a fashion both absolute
and peculiar. You find it less changed, more
discernible, than elsewhere, when it is in
evidence : yet when lost, more utterly lost,
and its continuity in repair interrupted.

The importance of such evidence to the his-
tory of Britain and of Europe, it is difficult to
exaggerate ; for the roads of Imperial Rome
were the very framework of her power.

It is a commonplace of history that the
first act of Rome on occupying a district,
was to establish her system of municipalities

THE ROMAN ROAD IN BRITAIN 15

and to connect them by an extension of her
system of roads. But this, though a common-
place in words, has not entered into the visual
concept of Europe upon which the historian
works. The West is not pictured in the mind
of the modern historical writer when he
attempts to tell its story as its Roman map
would show it. His vision does not include
those superb lines of definite purpose, running
ruled and accurate, in a strong mechanical
system, across the countrysides of Britain,
of Spain, and of Gaul. He does not see the
landscape of our world pinned to that strict
pattern as he should. Did men fully
comprehend the historical signification of
those rigid lines, that physical comprehension
would strongly aid a just comprehension of

our origins.

The reader will see later in this book (and
I shall use it as an argument), that, until
the resurrection of European culture in the
epoch of the Crusades, the Roman roads
account for the site of most battles, of most
great monasteries, of most marts, of most
palaces : for the development of all cam-
paigns.

That the Roman roads gradually declined

16 THE STANE STREET

is certain ; but that, for centuries, nothing
but water-carriage could take their place,
is more certain still ; and until the sudden
florescence of the Middle Ages they remained
the skeleton of the European organism.

To recover a Boman road, therefore, to
establish its exact alignment, even in detail,
is not one of those half-futile historic tasks,
whose achievement ends in itself. The re-
search has indeed its "sporting" side. It
presents all the fascination that attaches to
any form of hunting, with that element added
which comes from the tracking of a trail in
the open air ; and if the establishment of
a Eoman road had no other excuse but this
element of interest, the excuse would be
ample for the work involved.

But it has, as I have said, a much wider
interest, and a more extended usefulness. To
establish in anything like completeness the
scheme of roads in a Roman province is to
apprehend the physical basis upon which re-
posed that old, centralised, Imperial power
to which the desperate survival of Europe
clung. It is, further, to comprehend the re-
lationship of town with town, of garrison
with garrison, and of bishopric with bishopric.

THE ROMAN ROAD IN BRITAIN 17

It is an explanation of the passage of armies,
of commerce, and of ideas, for just over one
thousand years. The advance of a language
or its retreat, the rise and the decline of a
market, the barriers that could be set against
invasion, the limits reached by a raid of
barbarians, the propagation of the Faith,
the communication of disaster or revival, — all
these things are understandable when the
Imperial scheme of roads is understood ; and
the whole business of the Dark Ages during
which our civilisation melted down, as it were,
to recrystallise in the Middle Ages, is, on
its material side, explicable by a reference to
the Roman military ways.

To understand what held out against the
Asiatic in Spain and why, the two great roads
over the Pyrenees must be clearly seized.
One cannot understand what Austrasia was,
for instance, and why it had a Roman soul,
unless one has followed upon the map (or
better, on foot) the paved vise which radiate
from Maestricht, Utrecht, Aix, Treves, Cologne,
Bavai, Arras, Rheims, Chalons, Toul, Verdun,
and Bar.

The error which has regarded Austrasia
as fundamentally Germanic (an error typical

B

18 THE STANE STREET

of so many others) could not have arisen had
its authors comprehended that intersecting
net- work of ways. Austrasia was in frame-
work and being a Roman thing.

So with all the other problems and errors
attaching to our origins. The Roman road
is the chief material mark set by the Empire
upon Western Europe.

IV

We have seen that the peculiar fate of
Britain, its more complete or more disastrous
harrying in the east, and its being cut off,
by the ruin of the shore, from the rest of
civilisation, gave the Roman roads in it a
fate separate from that which fell upon them
in other provinces. They were at once more
necessary to a more barbaric society, and yet
less kept up than in Gaul or in the Germanics.

We find them almost untouched in their
trajectory for distances over which we could
not follow their parallels abroad. No great
system of road-making of a similar kind, in
broad and direct lines, nor any over-laying of
them by later work (at any rate, upon any

THE ROMAN ROAD IN BRITAIN 19

considerable scale), has obliterated or confused
the record.

Apart from this cause, which preserved the
Roman roads in their original alignment, other
causes are present.

The local autonomy characteristic of the
Middle Ages which in most other countries
merged at last, with the Renaissance, into
a few strong and centralised states, did not
so merge in England. On the contrary,
after the sixteenth century failure to
establish strong central government in Eng-
land, the self-governing villages were largely
transformed into the separate properties of
individual landlords. This great social trans-
formation, which England owes in the main
to her change of religion at the Reformation,
had effects political and social, which various
men, according to their temper, praise or
deplore. For the purposes of our inquiry
in this book, it had one capital effect, which
was the preservation of ancient ways and
of such ancient monuments as the form of
the soil retains. For a great landlord will
preserve such things where a peasantry would
destroy them ; and this is particularly true
of a landed class whose wealth is increasingly

20 THE STANE STREET

derived from sources other than the land,
and which can afford to treat its estates as
curiosities.

Yet another cause which has preserved
the Roman road in England — a cause also
attached to the survival, in name at least,
of quaint local institutions — is the way in
which the modern metalled roads were con-
structed here.

Upon the Continent, and especially in Gaul,
a new road is, and has been now for some
generations, a special undertaking of organised
government, specially engineered, at vast
expense. Not so in England. In England
our road system has not been planned. It
has developed in the main by the gradual
hardening and metalling and improving of
the old green lanes : hence the peculiar
narrowness and tortuousness of the English
road system as we have it to-day.

Incidentally, this slow and natural de-
velopment of a system which is peculiar
to this island, has largely helped to preserve
the Roman roads. Where these roads had
fallen to the state of green lanes over which
traffic was still customary and the right of
way upon which had never been lost, the

THE ROMAN ROAD IN BRITAIN 21

metalling of the same restored to the eye the
aspect of the old Roman military way.

We shall see later on in this book, how, in
the early part of the nineteenth century, the
Stane Street was thus metalled northward from
Slinfold to Alfoldean Bridge. In that public
work, which the Duke of Norfolk of the day
undertook, the Roman road reappeared. The
old Roman crossing over the river was re-
stored and the antique line was fixed for the
modern eye. But (to take a parallel instance
from the Continent) when a modern road was
driven from Amiens to Boulogne, the French
engineers made no use of the made Roman
line. It is nowhere, in all its length, a
principal highway, and the road which we
now use follows the Valley of the Somme.
One may say of the Roman roads in Gaul,
that where they have not been kept in con-
tinuous use, they have been replaced and
therefore ousted by modern lines as straight
and strict as they ; whereas, in Britain, dis-
connected stretches of the same are preserved
by our habit of metalling the old lanes.

There must be noted in this connection, a
feature of the Roman roads of Britain which
has presented a problem to the antiquarian,

22 THE STANE STREET

and has not always been accurately explained.
The dead straight line normal to a Eoman
road is, in this country, frequently, or rather
generally, modified. We note, as we follow
the track of an English Eoman way, perpetual
slight divergences from the strict line.
Almost any section of Roman roads taken
at random will suffice for an example of this :
I will choose for mine the roads converging
upon Cirencester.

The reader who shall follow this scheme of
roads1 may see jive main roads converging on
the town, and traces of a sixth : — the two
branches of an "Ermine" Street, the two
branches of the Fosse Way, and the Akeman
Street, with traces of a road from the south-
west, approaching Cirencester from the direc-
tion of Tetbury.

Now, in all these there is not one clear
piece of alignment, save that limb of the
"Ermine" Street, somewhat over four miles
long, which runs from the cross-roads near
Daglingworth up to the summit of Highgate.

1 It is most conveniently grasped on the 2-in. Ordnance
Map, Mounted and Coloured Series, Cirencester, sheet 70,
1903, corresponding to the four sheets, 234, 235, 251, 252
of the 1-in. 1893-1896 survey.

THE ROMAN ROAD IN BRITAIN 23

The southern branch of the " Ermine " Street
from Cricklade is badly deflected in the
neighbourhood of the Sisters' Inn. Over
beyond Thames it forms, not a straight line,

S K E TC H MAP

showing the

Six Roman Ways converging on Cirencester
& their divergence from true alignments.

SCALE OF MILES
O1 2345878

but the arc of a large curve ending at Stratton
St. Margaret, and south of that again it is
subjected to perpetual small deflections.

The Akeman Street is aligned, pointing at
Cirencester from Williamstrip Park (though

24 THE STANE STREET

it wobbles badly as it approaches the town).
But east of that park it makes no pretence
of being a straight line, and winds con-
veniently to the terrain, both before and
after the crossing of the river Leach. The
Fosse Way has not one strict alignment un-
broken by such bends. It is not a straight line,
but a sweep southward of North Leach, with
an uncertainty at the Fosse Bridge. Beyond
Cirencester to the south-west its alignment is
doubtful during all the part near Tetbury.
Indeed, between the Avon and a point 1|- mile
to the north-east of that stream, it is sinuous.

If we consider the other road, of which
traces only exist, and which can be followed
through eastward and northward, it is no
straighter than any one of our lanes. Indeed,
it is in many of its parts a modern lane,
with no strictness of alignment apparent.

This examination could be paralleled from
almost any similar converging-point of
Roman roads in England, and it demands an
explanation.1

1 Let the reader consider, for instance, out of one hundred
instances, the way that can be traced from Dorchester upon
the Thames, northward to Alchester and the neighbourhood
of Bicester. It is hardly anywhere directly aligned, and it

THE ROMAN ROAD IN BRITAIN 25

This character of irregularity in the Roman
roads of Britain, which often differentiates
them from those of the Continent, is the effect
of two widely separate causes.

First : Encroachment upon the public way
has been easier in Britain than in any other
province of Europe, because the local power
of propertied men has been nearly continu-
ously stronger in Britain than the general
power of the central Government. A certain
amount of encroachment is discovered upon
all the old roads throughout Western Europe,
but it is a commoner feature in this country
than elsewhere, and we owe to it the irregu-
larity of the line of our Roman roads, especi-
ally in the neighbourhood of buildings. This
must not be confused with considered and
originally designed divergences from the align-
ment, followed by a recovery of the alignment
further on. Divergence of a Roman road in
this fashion, of set purpose as it were, and
on a considerable scale, we shall find to be
ascribable to other causes; such as the
springing up of a community near the road,
the way to and from which replaces the road

is positively sinuous from Beckley to its passage between
Cowley and Horsepath.

26 THE STAKE STREET

over a certain section ; the choice of an easy
crossing for a river ; the necessity of taking
a steep hill at an easy gradient, &c., &c.

Secondly : The imperfection in alignment,
the occasional sinuosities, and the erratic
short curves in our British Roman roads are
also, and more largely, due to the fact that in
Britain, the remotest of their provinces, the
Romans did not occupy as thoroughly nor
engineer their ways at such an expense, or
so completely as in other portions of the
Empire. They were therefore often content
to avail themselves of existing tracks.

Let me not be misunderstood ; the repeated
view that Britain was a sparsely inhabited
and only partially Romanised province, is one
which no one with a care for historical truth
will to-day maintain. It arose in that hypo-
thetical and North German school of history
which prefers to accumulate facts rather than
to co-ordinate evidence; which delights to
give guesswork an equal rank with record, and
invariably to oppose that guesswork against
the tradition of civilisation. The effects of
that spirit have been seen and deplored in too
many fields, in the analysis of Scripture, in
the presentation of the Middle Ages, in the

THE ROMAN ROAD IN BRITAIN 27

attack upon the religion and institutions of
Europe, for any writer with an appreciation
of dignity to lend himself to it. Roman
Britain was not a sparsely inhabited nor an
ill-civilised province of the Empire. The
population of Roman Britain was consider-
able, its wealth was great ; its produce and
its armed force alike of consequence. But
there is no doubt that, with the exception of
the Great Wall, Rome did not invest in
Britain that accumulation of energy which
is to be found in Spain, or in most parts of
Gaul. The local languages, Teutonic and
Celtic, seem to have survived with an uni-
versal vigour where, upon the Continent, they
retired to the heaths of Brittany, to the
marshes of the Netherlands, and to within
a day or two's march of the Rhine ; and this
lessening si potential in the Roman effort here
we may ascribe to the severance of the sea.

It seems certain, then, that in the matter of
roads the Imperial power in Britain continu-
ally availed itself of pre-existing tracks which
were straightened and hardened for the pur-
poses of making a Roman and military way.
In sections only were they replanned and
thoroughly engineered.

28 THE STANE STREET

We shall see that the Stane Street in
particular is an exception to this general
rule. Part of the great interest attaching to
it lies in the fact that it was evidently
engineered in every yard of it; deliberately
planned for a particular Imperial purpose, and
unconnected (save possibly at river crossings)
with the barbaric ways which Roman civilis-
ation found on reaching the island.

In the course of any inquiry upon a Roman
road, the reader will be puzzled to note the
survival and the loss of them. This is be-
cause the destruction of some portions, coupled
with the preservation of others, depends upon
social forces spread over so great a length of
time that the result appears almost like one
of caprice. Roughly speaking, the Roman
roads were used, as we have seen, until the
twelfth century — butevidently notall of them;
nor even the whole length of the principal
ones. The bridges of some, where they crossed
the chief rivers, had disappeared, others had
already failed in the morasses : the use of the
road, once broken at several points, and each
section left to its own chance of survival, each
such section would further tend to disuse at
either end : it would " lead nowhere " and be

THE ROMAN ROAD IN BRITAIN 29

of continuous service only within its particular
neighbourhood. Hard metalling could no
longer reach it from a distance. It only
needs to break one such long line in two or
three small points specially costly to maintain,
and at once great sections of the rest will
begin to disappear.

Since the revival of Europe and its arts —
since, that is, the spring of the Middle Ages,
in the twelfth century, the following causes
have led to the decay of portions of all the
Roman roads, and of some of those roads in
their entirety : —

(1) The hardening of the more devious
tracks which led from one new village to
another off the road. Of such " loop lines,"
first rivalling and later supplanting the main
line, the map of Europe is full.

(2) The cost of upkeep of the roads where
they were expensively engineered : this is
particularly the case in mountainous districts,
over morasses, and where the road had to
make use of great bridges. But it does not
apply to cuttings, which, though expensive to
make, are not expensive to keep up, but main-
tain themselves.

(3) The new political relations of one centre

30 THE STANE STREET

with another. For instance, Windsor as a
place of Government was a direct creation
of the Conqueror's and it needed a road
to London ; only part of the way was served
by the old Roman road to Staines.

(4) The growth of forests : —

A piece of woodland, when once it had
arisen, was carefully preserved in the Middle
Ages for the following reasons : — First, that it
was a permanent source of revenue. The
Middle Ages burnt nothing but wood, which
was also their main material of domestic con-
struction. It was at the same time very costly
to transport. Further, wood was the pasture
of the herds of swine. Secondly, a given unit
of wealth production, once established, always
tended to crystallise in the Middle Ages on
account of the manorial system. Custom
preserved it. It was difficult in the face of
manorial custom to destroy a wood once estab-
lished, to which must be added: Thirdly,
the strict feudal interpretation of " waste."
The most immediately realisable capital in
the hands of the spendthrift or the fraudulent
guardian, was the timber upon an estate.
For that very reason both public opinion and
the law were particularly strict in repressing

THE ROMAN ROAD IN BRITAIN 31

the cutting of timber save in regular annual
rotation.

Finally, of course, one must note the oppor-
tunities for hunting which a wood afforded.

Many of the gaps in the Roman roads are
due to a wood having grown up upon some
poor soil during the Dark Ages, coupled with
the impossibility of felling it in the succeed-
ing centuries (in spite of their increasing
wealth) from the causes I have mentioned.

We have an example of this on the Stane
Street itself, in the Nore Wood. This wood
covers a couple of miles, through which the
road has fallen utterly out of use even for the
simplest local purposes. Very old trees are
to be found growing upon the Way itself
throughout this stretch.

To this interruption of the roads by woods
overgrowing them must be added the tendency
of existing forests, through which the old
roads were cut, to encroach upon the ways.

By the time the woods which arose in the
Dark Ages began to be cleared again in
modern times the use of the road that once
led through them had disappeared.

(5) Many of the great ways appear to
have been mainly strategic. When their

32 THE STANE STREET

strategic purpose disappeared, their continuous
use throughout their whole length disappeared
also.

The Stane Street is an excellent example
of this. Great stretches of it were always in
use throughout the isolated kingdom of
Sussex, but from the sixth century until at
least the twelfth, no occasion occurred for
organised military communication between
Chichester and London, so the part about the
county border between the upper Arun and
Ockley fell into desuetude. The same is true
of the great line from Bavai to Utrecht. It
was a necessary thing when Rome was per-
petually replenishing her garrisons upon the
boundaries of the Empire. When this march-
ing ceased, men had little occasion to travel
along the whole length of the way. They
used it from one neighbouring town to
another ; but where there was a gap in their
commercial or military necessities, there a gap
would come upon the use of the road.1

1 It is this which accounts for the loss of one of the
greatest Roman roads: that which led from the Paris
district across the Somme at Voyennes to the Frankish
district of the north and east. The last army to use the
river passage engineered by this road (then in ruins) was
that of Henry V. before Agincourt.

CATHEDRAL AND CROSS, CHICHESTER

THE ROMAN ROAD IN BRITAIN 33

(6) A number of quite modern causes must
be enumerated as having had a considerable
effect upon the fate of the Roman roads.
First, the paving or metalling of certain new
main ways other than, and alternative to,
the Roman roads. Once this was done, there
was hardly any choice. Travel would always
follow the hard way, and where the Roman
road was neglected by the modern improve-
ment it became neglected by all travellers.
It was no longer used as an alternative.1

Again, the growth of new and modern
towns, due to changes in commerce, unmake
sections of a Roman road. The growth of
Lille, for instance, has helped to obliterate
the scheme of Roman roads in its neighbour-
hood. Lille has become the centre of a road
system of its own, and many as were the
Roman roads in its neighbourhood, most of
them only survive in sections as local bye-
ways.

The same is true of the change in the
nature of a stronghold. Steep, isolated hills,

1 The main Brussels road from Paris is an example of
this— only when it uses the section of a Koman road has
that road survived. Thus it is preserved east and west of
Bavai, but lost between Nimy and Jemappes.

C

34 THE STANE STREET

such as the Hill of Cassel, in Flanders, play
no leading part in fortification after the
seventeenth century. The half-dozen capital
Roman roads which all concentrate like
spokes of a wheel on Cassel are therefore
now all of them interrupted ; in more than
half their length they are abandoned, and
only one of them is more than a country
lane, even in the parts where it is in use.

Finally, the development of railways has
of course very considerably affected the old
lines of travel. For instance, the shortest
way from Rheims into the Barrois was,
until the middle of the nineteenth century,
by the Roman road across the plain of
Chalons.1 This road left Chalons itself con-
siderably to the west ; it afforded but bad
going, with doubtful water, and in places deep
clay ; but it was the direct road from the
ecclesiastical capital to the Rhine, and traffic
followed it. Since the building of the rail-
way great stretches of it have fallen into
desuetude, for no one has occasion to walk

1 It is characteristic of the uses of a Roman road that
Attila used this way in his retreat. His great camp or
u ring " is still to be seen alongside of the road, one of the
most enormous things in Europe,

THE ROMAN ROAD IN BRITAIN 35

the whole of that way, and heavy goods
go by rail. Those parts of it which are
still in use are mainly kept up by the army
marching to the Camp of Chalons from the
eastern frontiers of France.

With all this there are gaps without number
in the system of Roman roads in Western
Europe which we cannot explain because we
know nothing of the local social accidents
which determined them. They occur in the
oddest places, where we can least guess at
their causes : on open downs, over hard rock,
even on ledges of hillside where the track
should be imperishable. They vary in length
from a few yards to a hundred miles and
more.1 But these are the main causes which

1 Too long a list would be tedious : but here are a
few cases taken at random that occur to me. Why should
the great road from Winchester to Portsmouth Harbour
be lost suddenly at Nations Farm, near Bishop's Waltham ?
The land is the same in the kept part and the lost. Why
does the Ackling Dyke choose to disappear on the high
land south of the Ebble, just where it should best survive ?
Why does the great road out of Salisbury to the Bristol
Channel leave no trace on the chalk west of the Ridge
Wood, just where it had the best opportunity for remaining
untouched ? Most strange of all, why does the most famous
stretch of all Roman roads in the Dark Ages, the artery
between Soissons and Noyon that was the short main
highway of the Frankish monarchy, wholly perish, not at

36 THE STANE STREET

the reader must bear in mind when we come
to analyse the particular case of the Stane
Street, though we shall find in that case too
one gap, and that by far the most import-
ant, the causes of which it is impossible to
establish.

When we have appreciated the importance
of research into the scheme of Roman roads
in this country, and further appreciated the
causes which have made for the preservation
of our evidence with regard to them and
for the loss of certain sections, we must
lastly grasp some general idea of the strategic
and political scheme upon which they de-
pended in this island before we can turn to
the peculiar character of the Stane Street.

The Eoman roads of Britain combined two
services : they provided communications for

the marshy crossing of the Oise — where it ought to be
lost — but on the hill of Choisy beyond, and thence almost
all the way to Soissons ? Why does the main road from
Rheims to Treves go right and clear to the Aisne and then
amuse itself by disappearing for over a hundred miles?
Why does the great way from the South to Norwich faint
just before that great camp at Caistor where one would
most look for it ? It is examples of this kind which make
the gap in the Stane Street between Epsom and Merton,
which we shall later examine, less improbable than it
looks. See further note B at the end of this book.

THE ROMAN ROAD IN BRITAIN 37

the frontier defences, and they linked up
the towns upon whose municipal system the
whole scheme of Imperial civilisation de-
pended.

For the purposes of this little monograph,
the roads feeding the northern frontier may
be neglected.

In the south of England the Roman roads
linked chains of existing towns one with
another; they had therefore a purpose com-
mercial and civil as well as military, and were
not called into being by purely strategic con-
siderations; nor were they the single work
of military engineering with its direct purpose
and simplicity of action. In other words,
the roads of the south were not planned to
feed with troops and with the munitions of
war some centre that was a depot and
nothing else. For, whatever we may con-
jecture the origin of certain Roman towns
in Southern England to have been, we know
that all soon became places of civil import-
ance and that none remained mere strong-
holds.

Now as, for civil purposes, a road will
establish itself by custom without too exact
a plan, and as the greater part of our centres

38 THE STANE STREET

of population in South England must surely
be pre-Roman in their origin, we can under-
stand that the roads leading from one to
the other would bear traces of that origin
as well ; and when, South Britain being the
more fertile and inhabitable part of the
island, we note the great number of towns
which it contained, it will be apparent that
the construction of no one of these roads (save
in the particular case of the Stane Street,
which we are about to examine) required a
special feat of military engineering.

From the 52nd parallel to the south of the
Isle of Wight, and from longitude 3° west to
the extremity of Kent, is a district contained
within an oblong not 100 miles by 200.

In that little space we have at least twenty-
six Roman towns whose names and sites we
can be certain of, and the longest stretch with
which a road has to deal between any two of
them — such a stretch, for instance, as the run
from Bath to Cirencester, or from Gloucester
to Caerleon passes through places which we
may justly conceive to have been of their
nature inhabited from the most ancient times.
If we note one of the largest stretches, the
fifty miles and more from London to Sil-

THE ROMAN ROAD IN BRITAIN 39

Chester, nowhere in that stretch do we find
a day's march passing through land probably
deserted in early times.

But to this rule the Stane Street is the
one exception : and it is this peculiar char-
acter in the Sussex road which gives it its
special interest. The Stane Street bears

Sifti

Fia. 1.

throughout its whole course the mark of
being specially designed to unite London
for military purposes alone, and by the
shortest route, with the south-west and the
Great Haven, the second entry into Britain
from oversea, the alternative route to the
Kentish one in the military connection from
Rome through London to the frontier.

40 THE STANE STREET

To proceed from the sheltered water within
the Isle of Wight, and notably from Ports-
mouth Harbour, to London, the way that
led from inhabited site to inhabited site was
the way round by Winchester. But the
short way was the way through Chichester,
and that way gave the further alternative
advantage of tapping any of the creeks and
sheltered tidal waters between Southampton
water and Selsey.

But — and this must especially be noted —
no track leading from inhabited site to in-
habited site, and therefore naturally existing
before the advent of civilised engineering,
could have lain along the direct line from
Chichester to London : no stretch of good,
well-watered land corresponds with this
north-to-south line.

A belt of good soil and water running
east and west formed the plain in which
Chichester stood. A narrower belt, isolated
from the first by a barren belt of the Downs,
ran just to the north of these hills, also east
and west.

Then came a barrier : it was formed by
the great district of clay, marsh, thickets and
brackish water, which, under primitive con-

THE ROMAN ROAD IN BRITAIN 41

ditions, or indeed under any conditions save
those of a very active civilisation, must re-
main but sparsely inhabited or cultivated ;
to this district the Romans gave the name
of the Anderidan wood, a name presumably

London

FlG. 2.

much older than their rule, and which we
still call by the Saxon name of the Weald.
This barrier also ran east and west, and
it is to be observed that its width forms an
obstacle much more than a day's march across.
It was this width of the badly -watered, badly-
soiled clay which made the weald the barrier

42 THE STAKE STREET

it was ; and though another narrow belt
of early inhabited land lay (east and west
again) just under the North Downs, the
direct route to London immediately after
this would pass through mile after mile of
uncultivatable high chalk country, waterless
save for deep wells.

The whole scheme of the direct route
between the harbours and London forbade
it to follow any line of habitation and supply :
it cut across three belts of the sort, but they
were narrow ; it had to negotiate three belts
quite inhospitable — and they were broad,
the central and most inhospitable very broad,
a day-and-a-half s going.

In general, therefore, we may conclude that
no continuous and largely used native track
suitable for considerable numbers on the
march can have existed before the Romans
from the harbours upon the confines of
Hampshire and Sussex to the great town
upon the Thames. When civilised men
needed to march an army back and forth
between these points in the most direct
manner, that need could only be supplied
by the carefully-thought-out work of engineers,
who had the implements of civilised men

THE ROMAN ROAD IN BRITAIN 43

behind them. Such men were the first to
cross the weald with a great road, and they
stamped upon their work the military motive
which determined it.

We turn, therefore, to the particular study
of the Stane Street with the knowledge that
we are approaching an exception to the
general scheme of Roman roads in South
Britain and one of the two great military
works which the Empire created in this
island.

PART II

THE PARTICULAR CASE OF THE
STANE STREET

PART II

THE PARTICULAR CASE OF THE
STANE STREET

WE have just seen that the Stane Street
presents an exception to the other Roman
roads of Britain, and it is this exceptional
character which provides our chief interest
in the recovery and study of its course : that
alone of the roads it seems to have been
engineered at one time and with one purpose
by the officials of the Roman Empire, without
regard to any older British track, save possibly
in its choice of river crossings. These it may
have chosen upon the basis of an early
barbaric experience. No other road in Britain
is so completely designed for the sole use
of the army.

It is, again, the only one of the Roman roads
upon which we can place no Roman town
or village of importance : from Chichester

47

48 THE STANE STREET

to London, from its southern to its northern
terminus, no such site is found.

This point is evidently dependent upon
its artificial and purely military character, since
the absence of inhabited sites upon it is due
to the fact that the Stane Street did not
link up existing communities, nor serve as
a general means of communication between a
line of markets or producing centres, but linked
up only a great depot with the sea communica-
tions of the enemy, and that over land where
deserts demanded a particular effort of military
engineering. It is probable, as we shall see,
that one community (Dorking) sprang up
upon its course, and it is possible that another
site (Pulborough) may be referred by its name
to the barbaric period before the coming of
Roman armies. But there was no chain of
frequent town, village, and settlement, such
as is to be discovered strung along the other
Roman roads of the south. In their place
set camps mark the stations of a marching
road.

This original motive in the construction of
the road determines its general characters,
which must be described before we examine
in detail the trajectory of the Stane Street.

THE STANE STREET 49

These characters are, in their order : —

First: The establishment of its termini,
the southern one at Chichester, the northern
at London, and what may be called " the Line
of the Road"

Secondly: The alignments — that is, the
method by which the Stane Street was
plotted out, and its arrangement upon four
great limbs or sections, each of which can be
directly proved to have been planned from
one point to another upon a straight line.

Thirdly : The military character of the road,
which is especially established by its camps
or halting-places at the end of each day's
march : the Mansiones.

Fourthly: The historical character of the
road, its probable or possible date and con-
tinuity in use : to which must be added —

Fifthly : The divergence of modern roads
from this ancient way and their connection
with it — that is, the partial loss of the Stane
Street : a discussion which will involve an
examination of the geological formations over
which the Stane Street runs.

THE LINE OF THE ROAD

The Stane Street starts from the East Gate
of Chichester and is designed with the object
of reaching by the shortest road (compatible
with the overcoming of natural obstacles) the
southern end of London Bridge. The exact
distance from one point to the other in a
straight line is 55 miles and 3 furlongs.

The choice that was made of Chichester
for a starting-point is easily explicable. It
was the first town lying in the east of the
group of harbours at the mouth of Southamp-
ton Water. All these creeks have afforded
excellent shelter in the past. Bosham was
a considerable point of departure to and from
the Continent well into the Middle Ages, and
Chichester Harbour itself was in such use
until the last century as to merit the building
of that canal (uniting it with the Arun and
serving the town upon the way) which Turner
has made famous.

50

THE LINE OF THE ROAD 51

Chichester, then, was the obvious starting-
point, the necessary depot and base for any
advance across the Downs and the Weald.
But the exact point in connection with
London at which the road was aimed, requires
more discussion.

An examination of the old roads which
seem to have served the neighbourhood of
London has led our latest school of anti-
quaries to the opinion that the crossing of
the river was long effected by two ferries, one
crossing to Westminster, over the site of the
present Houses of Parliament, the other cros-
sing about midway between London Bridge
and the Tower, and a little nearer the
latter.

With the first of these crossings we are
not concerned ; but the second is important
to us, because it might establish an alternative
northern terminus to the Stane Street.

I shall conclude that the Stane Street
pointed, not to this conjectural early ferry,
but to old London Bridge.

It is possible to determine the point
by taking the last visible alignment of
the Stane Street near Epsom Racecourse ;
that alignment points directly at London

52 THE STANE STREET

Bridge.1 It cannot possibly be established
by the rough indications which the relics of
the road have left us : we must be guided by
a consideration of probabilities. A military
road such as is the Stane Street, crossing
with difficulty a wide stretch of ill-inhabited
country, was obviously designed for the
purpose of immediate military communica-
tion. For that purpose the difference between
a bridge over the narrow part of a river, and
a ferry over its lower tidal part, is a differ-
ence of one to ten.

The Roman road from Portsmouth to
London, round by way of Winchester, though
longer than the Stane Street, was provided
with a bridge at Staines. It was to make a
short cut across this bend that the Stane
Street was built. If, as has been pretended,
the Thames was too wide at London for the
Romans to bridge it, they would have deflected

1 It can be fixed quite accurately from the corner of
Mickleham Downs House private grounds to the high
land next Tyrrell's Court. By that line we have an exact
coincidence with old London Bridge. The error requiring
an alignment with the ferry to the east would be one of 300
yards. This error in a trajectory of 18£ miles is one in a
hundred (3 in 309'76), and that is a very marked divergence.
It would mean in angular measurement over half a degree,
an appreciable angle even without instruments of precision.

THE LINE OF THE ROAD 53

the Stane Street by a slight angle and struck
above London : there would be no difficulty in
bridging the river at Richmond. In a word,
but for a bridge at London and the serving of
that bridge by a road, the Stane Street need
never have been built ; but for a bridge at
London, the natural way for military pur-
poses would have been through Staines, or,
when it was desired to establish a shorter
communication between the south-western
harbours and London, some bridge upriver
closer to the town.

In the midst of so much that is conjectural,
the reader may well ask what positive proof
we have for the existence of a bridge at this
point in Roman times ?

We have no positive proof. That is, no
material remains have been discovered which
are at once certainly the foundations or piles
of a bridge, and also certainly of Roman
origin. Nor is there any direct contemporary
documentary evidence to tell us that a bridge
was there.

In the absence of these two forms of
evidence, we must repose upon conjecture ;
but there is a common sense in history, al-
though it is so rarely used : we know that

54 THE STANE STREET

a bridge spanned the river at this spot in
the Dark Ages, and the Dark Ages produced
no such origins of their own. We know that
Eoman London was among the largest of
the Koman towns of the West ; we know
that one great approach to the river from
the Southwark side was along this line,
for there is a series of buildings and roadside
burials (as we shall see in a later section)
to prove it.1

The conclusion, which no sane critic can
refuse, that a Roman bridge did cross the
river here, is not based, however, upon such
evidence taken alone. It is based first upon
a conception of what the Roman civilisation
was, and next upon a very simple mechanical
consideration.

As to the first : The Roman civilisation is the
foundation of all Europe. It suffered and
was degraded during the Dark Ages, it was
transformed in the Middle Ages ; much of
its framework has reappeared in our own
time, for at the Eenaissance it re-arose. Those

1 See also the Victoria County History: London, vol.
i. pp. 109-110. Note the finds of 1756, 1824, and suc-
ceeding years (when the new bridge was building) of
1846, &c.

THE LINE OF THE ROAD 55

who can imagine that the Dark Ages would
have produced a great and necessary work
like the Bridge of London, and who can
imagine at the same time that Rome would
have neglected it, are incapable of judging
the history of Europe. To anyone with a
sense of that history, the assertion would
seem as absurd as the assertion that some
tattered fragment of a great picture found
in the hand of a child was the creation of
that child, or that a lost poem of Catullus
written in a hand of the ninth century was
a poetical product of the ninth century.

But if this type of argument seems out
of place in scientific theory, its mechanical
counterpart suffices to clinch the matter.

This second or mechanical argument for a
Roman Bridge is as follows : —

A very strong tide sweeps the Thames at
London. Any form of ferry would have
involved a trajectory of a most uncertain
kind. A ford — if there was one — could only
have been used just at the few minutes
of slack water and only at the lowest point
of the tide — once in twelve hours. Nor could
anyone who believes that a ford was used
for commerce or under the ordinary conditions

56 THE STANE STREET

of the life of so great a town, have himself
gone through the experience of fording a
deep and rapid stream.

But to return to the ferry : a ferry, I say,
must necessarily have had a most various
trajectory : the boats pulling far upstream
westward in the ebb, far downstream eastward
in the flood ; often missing the stage, always
uncertain, and free from any one line. Coins
and objects dropped from the boats of such
a ferry would have been found scattered in-
differently over a wide belt up and down
the stream. They have been found, as a
fact, upon one definite line. The loss or
abandonment of material along one line, that
line the line of the historic bridge of the
Dark and Middle Ages, that line a narrow one
and a strict one reaching from shore to shore
— conclusively proves in a material manner
the Roman or Pre-Eoman origin of the work.

The Stane Street, then, was, we may make
certain, designed to run from the East Gate
of Chichester to the south end of that Roman
bridge of London which stood just where
the mediaeval bridge of which it was the
parent also stood, and which lay some 50
yards downriver from the modern bridge.

THE LINE OF THE ROAD 57

Two such termini being established for a
Roman road, if there were no considerable
centre of habitation or stronghold to be visited
in between, it was in the Roman plan to con-
nect the two by a line as straight as possible.

As a fact, the Boman road from Chichester
to London does not follow this dead straight
line from point to point. Such a line would
take it through Petworth Park (cutting the
great pond there through its middle), and so
going up through Abinger in Surrey (leaving
Leith Hill well to the east) ; it would cut
through the heart of Epsom just at the cross-
roads in the middle of that town.

The road does not do this, and the reason
it does not is that the Roman engineers had
to consider two obstacles in their way : hills
and water, and to pass these with the least
expense while still serving as fully as possible
the purpose of their task, which was to reach
London from Chichester by the shortest tra-
jectory.

In order to surmount the hills and to cross
the rivers most easily — subject to such a
purpose — the road was planned, not in one
perfectly straight line, but a broken one con-
sisting of four great straight sections whose

58 THE STANE STREET

total length amounts to just over a mile and
a half more than the absolute straight line
— 56 miles and 7-| furlongs, in place of 55
miles and 3 furlongs. At so slight an ex-
pense was secured an easy passage both of the
North and of the South Downs and proper
crossings of the rivers Arun and Mole.

This length was increased (by sundry slight
divergences, which will be dealt with later)
to a total distance of 57 miles and 1 furlong,
which is the complete mileage of the road
from terminus to terminus.

The straight line from the East Gate of
Chichester to the southern end of London
Bridge lies at an angle to the meridian
30° 25' East of North, but the Stane Street
starts out from Chichester for its first section
(which terminates at Pulborough Bridge and
is somewhat over 14 miles in length) at an
angle 52° 45' East of the meridian.

The second limb from Pulborough Bridge
to Leith Hill bends round towards the original
line and runs but 22° 30' East of the
meridian. It is 17J miles in length.1

1 This second limb is slightly broken at its origin, as is
shown upon the appended sketch map. The reason of this
will appear later upon pp. 96, 97.

THE LINE OF THE ROAD 59

London

R. Thames^

Pulboro" Bridge

Chichester

FIG. 3.

60 THE STANE STREET

The third limb, from Leith Hill to the
crossing of Juniper Hill,1 is a short one of 6f
miles, designed to negotiate Dorking Gap and
to avoid the steep edge of Box Hill ; while
the fourth limb, not quite 19 miles in length
and running from the shoulder of the Box
Hill group to the Thames, begins to be straight
from a point in Mickleham Downs, is aligned
backwards towards Juniper Hill and points
straight to London Bridge ; it is driven at an
angle under 28° 15' East of the meridian, and
therefore converges with the ideal straight line
from Chichester to London (which it meets
at the foot of the Bridge) on a very fine
angle.

It has been suggested that the construc-
tion of the Stane Street in these four limbs,
each at an angle to its neighbours, and the
abandonment of the direct line to London,
was due to the difficulty which the engineers
of the Empire would have found in striking
a direct line of such length. A total tra-
jectory of 57 miles, one might imagine (had

1 If we count from one " sighting point " to another, the
end of this third limb is a point on Juniper Hill, making the
limb 1 mile and more longer : but the point of flexion of
the actual road is below this.

THE LINE OF THE ROAD 61

one no parallel instances to guide one), was of
a magnitude that could hardly have been
guaranteed against deflection.

The method by which the Roman engineers
presumably plotted out the strict direction
of their great highways will be dealt with
later ; and it will be seen that this method,
though capable of perfect accuracy over such
a stretch of country as might be commanded
in one great view from a particular height,
would possibly tend to inaccuracy over a
distance involving several such views. On
this account, the suggestion has been made
that the Roman engineers in plotting out the
Stane Street could not trust themselves to
one alignment so prolonged ; they took a
general direction only, and " pieced together "
more or less hap-hazard exact alignments
drawn from one view-point to another.

But we have examples which convince us
to the contrary.

The great Roman roads of the north of
France are known to preserve their alignment
very nearly over spaces equivalent to this
great stretch of country. It is true that in
the longest of these stretches, in Normandy
and Picardy (to take the provinces where

62 THE STANE STREET

they may be best observed), some slight de-
flection is observable, and that tbe dead
straight line is apparently not obtained over
a trajectory superior to some 30 miles.1 But
it will be observed in the case of the Stane
Street that there has not been even an
attempt at such a route. This military way

1 Thus the great road south-west from Bavai runs straight
for 15 miles to Forest ; then there is a very slight
deflection over the next run of 10 miles. Again, the main
road from Amiens to the east runs without a swerve for just
over 30 miles, but it has no further task, for at the end
of this stretch it joins with the Bavai road. On the other
hand, the great road from Amiens south-east is permanently
deflected by the hill of Beaucourt, the deflection amount-
ing to nearly 2°, and occurring less than 13 miles from
the city. The road north-eastward from Bavai, whose
ultimate terminus is Aix-la-Chapelle, does not run more
than 29 miles without a turn, but the turn here,
though slight, is so noticeable that it was probably intended.
The great road driven from Paris to Rouen is a better
example still, for here we have an alignment from St.
Gervais to Ecouis which points directly at the town of
Rouen and falls within its Roman walls, and which yet suffers
a slight, divergence after the sixteenth mile, a divergence
which has to be corrected after the river Andelle is crossed.
In general, the attempts of the Roman engineers to drive
an absolutely straight line over a stretch of country greater
than was commanded by one view, is never perfectly success-
ful, but, on the other hand, is always near enough to success
to make the angles of deflection very slight, and never so far
from success as to account for great breaks of 7° and
19°, such as we have in the Stane Street.

THE LINE OF THE ROAD 63

is deliberately planned in another fashion, and
makes first for Pulborough, well off to the
east of the direct line ; then at a clear angle
of several degrees for the shoulder of Leith
Hill, thence at another sharp angle for Burford
Bridge and the heights above it, thence
at another sharp angle for London Bridge.
Had some such attempt been made 1 to drive
a road straight from terminus to terminus,
we might expect a direction laid first
on Petworth, some slight error of alignment
perhaps behind Petworth where the view
was lost, another caused by the confusion
of hills between Leith Hill and the right
bank of the Mole, and, in the result, a line
nearly but not quite accurately laid would
have been obtained.2 But no such one line
has been even attempted.

The rationale of the road's construction
is a further evidence in the matter. The

1 As was made, for example, in the case of the Rouen-
Paris road just quoted, which crosses the Oise and several
minor rivers and yet attempts a fairly direct trajectory of
no less than 80 miles.

a That is exactly what we have, for instance, in the great
Norman road between Pontoise and Fleury. The general
direction is nearly obtained with slight deflections due to
the masking of each great view as its boundary height is

64 THE STANE STREET

straight line can only have been obtained
(as we shall see later) by the fixing of marks,
high posts, or whatnot, which could be ob-
served at a distance, and the fixing of inter-
mediary posts aligned between the more
distant ones. Such a method, the absolute
accuracy of which could only be tested over
one view, might lend itself to a slight varia-
tion where two sections of the alignment
joined, but it would in no way account for the
bold and deliberate angles made one with
another by the limbs of the Stane Street.

Another cause for this lack of a direct
alignment from Chichester to London might
at first sight be found in the broken nature
of the country and the difficulty the engineer
would have been under — without compass
or theodolite — to estimate what the straight
line should be over so considerable a distance.
He would have (one might wrongly imagine)
to "feel his way" more or less; he might
know, for instance, from travel or from the
experience of the barbarians, that Pulborough
was more or less upon the way and was
a common crossing-place of the Arun, that
Leith Hill was another landmark " more or
less," and that his goal upon the Thames

THE LINE OF THE ROAD 65

could be actually discerned upon a clear day
from the summit of the Leatherhead Downs,
which would be a third landmark.

But a visiting, in good weather, of the
view-points in question, proves to one that
the Koman engineer — even if we suppose him
lacking instruments of precision — was guided
by something much more definite than such
guesswork. If, for instance, Leith Hill were
one of a mere series of popular landmarks on
the straight line to London, then he would not
have gone round by Pulborough to reach it.

One has but to stand upon the summit
of the Downs at Gumber, where the Stane
Street crosses them, to see without the aid
of any instrument that the straight line from
Chichester to Leith Hill, both of which are
conspicuous from this point, passes far to the
westward of one's position.

In general, we must conclude that the
line taken by the Stane Street was so taken
deliberately, and that the Roman engineer in
choosing to break the space between Chiche-
ster and Dorking Gap into two distinct
limbs, set at an angle of 30° one to the other,
and meeting at Pulborough, had some definite
purpose in view.

E

66 THE STANE STREET

What that purpose was, and how similar
purposes governed the formation of the other
two " limbs," that which negotiates Dorking
Gap and that which drives from Leatherhead
Downs on to London Bridge, I will next
proceed to inquire.

II

THE ALIGNMENTS

We have seen that the Stane Street is,
unlike any other Roman road in Britain, arti-
ficially planned throughout its whole length,
basing itself upon no pre-existing path ; and
the proof of this lies in its establishment
along four great plotted lines (three running
accurately straight, and one1 broken for a
discoverable cause), from one determined point
to another.

There are, indeed, very many examples in
which portions of a British Roman road have
been so exactly aligned. I have already
quoted on p. 22 that part of the Gloucester-
Silchester road which runs to a marked hilltop
north-westward from Cirencester. A similar
alignment leads directly from the height

1 That from Pulborough Bridge to Leith Hill. This limb,
the second counting northwards, is deflected in its first
quarter, as I have already said, and for reasons later to be

examined.

87

68 THE STANE STREET

above the Noddon at Stanford to the height
on which stood Calleva. A third is the dead
straight line through Stowe Park and its neigh-
bourhood in Bucks ; another that from Strat-
ford, aligned on Plumpark Hill to Towcester ;
another that stretch of the Fosse Way from
Halford to Compton Verney. There is no
need to multiply the examples ; they are to
be discovered up and down the island by the
dozen. But in no case does the whole road
show this character throughout save in the
case of the Stane Street. Thus, in the case
of the Silchester road just mentioned, there
is an uncertain alignment east of the Loddon
and a gradual deflection further on at the
fords of the Black Water. Upon any Roman
road we may choose to take, except the Stane
Street, such sinuosities or gradual divergences
from the straight are common. We must
ascribe them, as I have said, to the advantage
taken by Roman engineers in inhabited dis-
tricts, of existing ways, and to the necessity
or temptation they were under, of visiting
existing settlements.1

1 The road coming up from Winchester to Silchester
is another example of the same thing. It is aligned be-
tween Worting and Beaurepaire Farm in the most precise

THE ALIGNMENTS 69

The Stane Street alone avails itself in no
part of its length of older trackways.

From the East Gate of Chichester to Pul-
borough Bridge one direct alignment has been
struck, the accuracy of which is the more
remarkable from the fact that it crosses a
range of hills between the two points, so
that each end of this first limb is hidden
from the other.

From Pulborough Bridge, again, to a point
on the shoulder of Leith Hill, a second align-
ment has been struck, one slight divergence

manner ; but north of the latter point there is a clear
deflection, although a slight one. The Port Way, again, in
the same neighbourhood, is an excellent example of direct
alignment for miles, and one of the clearest in the island,
although there is a very slight deflection due probably to
a near "sighting" after the summit of Hannington Hill.
But west of Andover as far as Quarley Hill local paths
earlier than the Roman occupation appear to have baen
used, and thus to have interfered with the strict plan,
which is not recovered again till a point is reached between
Quarley Hill and Sarum.

If I am right in ascribing the lack of a straight road
between the two points mentioned, to the use of pre-
existing paths, the exception would correspond to the more
thickly inhabited country of the Anton Valley. But if
local search should establish a straight road in this central
section, the whole of the Port Way from Sarum to Silchester
would form a parallel case to what I here call the excep-
tional case of the Stane Street.

70 THE STANE STREET

in which will be discussed later : it is but an
added proof of artificial alignment, and bears
no relation to earlier roads.

From the shoulder of Leith Hill, a third
line was struck to the height of Juniper Hill
above Burford Bridge.

For a space of several miles south of this
last point, and for some little way to the
north of it, the road is unavoidably deflected
from the strictness of its system, by the
necessity of turning the very steep flanks of
the Box Hill group ; but once these are
negotiated, from ft point at the beginning of
the grounds of Cherkley Court, the Stane
Street, as I shall hope to show later, is
aligned upon a fourth great " limb " absolutely
straight which reaches its northern terminus
at London Bridge.

The road is sometimes compelled, from the
steepness of a bank, or from the presence of
marshy soil, to desert its direct line de-
liberately for some space and to make an
" elbow " to one side. But it always recovers
the alignment again, and such an arrangement
is a further proof of the artificial engineering
of the whole of its course and of the absence
of reliance upon pre-existing tracks, such as

THE ALIGNMENTS 71

are to be found, I think, upon every other
Koman way in the island.

Before examining the course of these
" limbs," we must ask how so perfect a series
of alignments was effected.

The answer to this can of course be based
on nothing but conjecture; but we may
confirm our conjecture both by noting certain
traditional ways in which an alignment is
still taken over long stretches of country,
and by a consideration of the limitations
under which the Roman engineers presumably
worked.

Whether the civilisation of the later Empire
possessed instruments which enabled distant
observations to be taken, we do not know.
But the weight of negative evidence against
the existence of such appliances is so strong
that everyone has rightly presumed it to be
overwhelming.

The vulgar conception that the arts and
sciences enjoy a definite progress, and that
the civilisation we enjoy has been slowly and
regularly evolved through an indefinite past,
may be dismissed with the contempt it
deserves. An infinity of human instruments,
and of human discoveries, an infinity of

72 THE STANE STREET

technical work in text-books and in material,
has disappeared under those successful wreck-
ings of culture which have undoubtedly
marked the history of Europe with regularly
recurrent disasters from its unknown begin-
nings to our own time.

It would be ridiculous to assert that pre-
cision of measurement, the advantages con-
ferred by the modern telescope, by the
vernier, &c., were necessarily unknown in
all periods of antiquity. But in making a
particular comparison between two particular
periods — our own and the first four centuries
of the Empire — we have a right to assume
our great superiority in the process of sur-
veying.

We know, from their astronomical and
geographical speculations, that their observa-
tion of angles had nothing of our modern
precision ; we may presume that no instru-
ment more powerful than the human eye
was available for the discerning of distant
points.

How, then, was a straight line established
by the Roman engineers between two distant
points which it was desired to connect by
a made way ? There is a process — perhaps

THE ALIGNMENTS 73

fche only practical one where telescopic aid
and instruments of precision are absent —
which can establish such alignments over
distances corresponding to one great view,
and even capable of linking up in one line
two or more such single stretches. This pro-
cess may be watched in practice to-day upon
a smaller or larger scale throughout Europe.
It is the process used for the alignment of
rides through the great forests by our modern
woodmen, and for the laying out of any
straight course.

This process is one of " sighting," and in
its simplest form is as follows. Of two ob-
servers, one takes his station at one of the
termini and there sets up a mark to which the
alignment is to run from the other terminus.
At that other terminus a second observer is
stationed and a second mark fixed.

Between the two observers, and at some
central point observable by both, a third sets
up a third movable mark, and shifts it to
the right or left as the two observers stationed
at either end of the line may signal him,
until this stake exactly covers the first terminal
mark as seen from the second and the second
as seen from the first. In theory, it would

74 THE STANE STREET

be sufficient to have one observer only at
one terminus, watching the moving central
mark and signalling to it until it was exactly
in line with the other terminus. In practice,
it is more accurate to have the observations
controlled and corrected from either end.

When the central point is settled, the mov-
able mark is there fixed. It becomes in its
turn a terminus. Parties proceed to establish
in the same fashion other intermediate marks
between the centre and each terminus ; the
shorter sections so formed are again divided
by smaller poles observable over the shorter
distances ; the intervals are staked ; and at last
a line marked to every few yards is plotted
out, and finally corrected by sights taken
forward to the one terminus and backward
again to the other. It is easy in such a
fashion with a sufficient body of men to
obtain an exact alignment over distances
limited only by the possibility of observing
a distant mark, and the absence of any inter-
ference of high ground on the line between
the two termini.

Thus, in the annexed sketch map, an
observer at A marks across the intervening
plain, a tall, white pole, set up at B, a

THE ALIGNMENTS 75

distance such that it can be clearly observed
from A. A party working along C D
(between either extremity of which line the
alignment would obviously pass), shifts an-
other tall, white pole, until the observer at A
signals that it is exactly between him and
the mark at B. This signal is made when
the shifting post is at E, and at that point it
is fixed.

This done the process is repeated along

FIG. 4.

the line F G with A and E as terminals, and
a new fixed point is established at H. Then
along the line K L with E and B as terminals
till a new point is established at M, and so
forth. A few main points so established, the
alignment is finally marked at short distances
by a row of stakes along the line A B.

This elementary process of alignment pre-
supposes two heights overlooking a plain.
In practice, of course, short sections of the

76 THE STANE STREET

trajectory are hidden from their neighbours by
the irregularities of the soil. There may even
be such high ground between the two termini
as completely to shut off the sight of one
from the other; the element of complexity
thus introduced is resolved as follows :

Let A in the annexed sketch, be one
terminus of the alignment, and B the other,
while a height the crest of which is marked
by the letters F G intervenes between them.

FIG. 5.

Upon this crest two poles are raised, the one
moving along H I, the other along J K. An
observer accompanying the party which is
moving the first pole, manceuvres until he
has the second pole in line with B. Mean-
while, it is the business of the observer
accompanying the second pole to shift it back
and forth until the first pole is in a line
between him and A. In theory the two
might continue to shift indefinitely and make
an indefinite number of errors, but in practice,

THE ALIGNMENTS 77

since each party is fairly close to the other,
and signalling is constant and easy, the
double bearings are very promptly arrived
at. The first pole is fixed at M and the
second at N, so that M covers the mark A
as observed from N, and N in its turn covers
the mark B as observed from M. The two
"sighting" poles and the two termini are
then all four upon one line, and the staking
out of each branch of the section on either
side of the hill can be exactly proceeded
with, although each branch is invisible to the
other.

If a double height intervene between the
one terminus and the other, the process is
somewhat more difficult, but proceeds upon
the same lines of double alignment by back-
ward and forward sighting. More than two
intervening heights will not be discovered,
I think, upon any one limb of a Koman
road. There will, of course, be many inter-
vening folds of land, but no more than two
high points, nor more than two great views
embraced in any one perfectly straight section
of any Imperial military way.

Here a very interesting query suggests
itself as to the manner in which these dis-

78 THE STANE STREET

tant observations were effected by the Eoman
engineers.

I have spoken of a mark " clearly visible "
from a terminus or from a central point
between two termini, but the distance over
which these long straight lines run are suffi-
cient to make a modern observer of their
alignment marvel. Take, for example, such a
view as that from the top of Gumber Corner
to the East Gate of Chichester. Chichester
steeple, a great monument narrow and high,
standing on an absolutely level plain, makes
a fairly conspicuous mark, but without tele-
scopic aid a mere pole or standard, such as
could be easily set up and taken down again,
would be certainly invisible. We must
postulate the use of a mark of very consider-
able height, of some width (though tapering
to a point for the sake of accuracy), and
clearly defined against the sky : a scaffolding
of at least 150 feet made to such a shape
would not be too great, and we are com-
pelled to the conclusion that these great ways
could only be plotted out at a very great
expense in establishing many such marks.

An ingenious suggestion has been made in
more than one quarter that these great align-

THE ALIGNMENTS 79

ments were established by smoke signals. I
cannot agree with that opinion.

It is true that a column of smoke is seen
from a great distance, but it has a fatal
defect in the matter of precision. It will
require not only a very clear, but what is
much rarer a perfectly still day (the coinci-
dence of clarity and stillness is rarer still)
to do anything with a smoke signal seen from
Gumber as far off as the shoulder of Leith
Hill. Moreover, a little experience would
teach the defenders of this hypothesis how
difficult it is to locate the point upon a
distant sky-line whence even a perpendicular
column of smoke rises. Now, with a scaffold-
ing of any sort this is not so, and, for some
optical reason or other, a high scaffolding will
be clearly observable on a sky-line where a
lower one of similar width escapes the eye.

Again, it would be an infinitely long busi-
ness to establish fires in place after place half-
way between the two termini until one had
exactly hit off the medial point. Nor, as
this would commonly be much lower-lying
than the two terminals, would any column of
smoke, save a very tall and perfectly perpen-
dicular one, be of the least use.

80 THE STANE STREET

Now, these great alignments are exact to
a yard for mile after mile, and it is therefore
impossible to believe that any rough-and-
ready method such as a smoke- signal was
sufficient to direct them.

I am compelled, therefore, to the conclu-
sion that movable platforms were used with
scaffolding upon them. And these must have
been of great magnitude.1

Anyone who stands to-day, upon Pul-
borough Hill, and looks towards Leith Hill,
even upon the clearest day, will appreciate
how considerable a mark would be required for
the unaided eye to fix a terminus there. And
we must conclude that these enormous align-
ments could only be effected by some piece
of work of such dimensions as our modern
instruments of precision have made us lose
the habit of.

The magnitude of the undertaking is in-
creased in our judgment when we consider
the necessity of establishing the intermediary
points by the use of some movable vehicle :

1 Mirrors are a possible suggestion (though only for a
segment of the circle), but useless surely without telescopic
aid to fix distant reflections. Lights at night would be
quite impracticable. I can see no alternative to the engines
I have imagined.

THE ALIGNMENTS 81

a thing on wheels for which some sort of
short transverse track must usually have been
prepared, and which must have been able to
carry an erection clearly visible for a distance
of at least 10 miles.

Unless we are to admit the hypothesis of
very large works of this kind, we have no
alternative but to suppose the plotting out
of a more or less satisfactory alignment,
which should be brought to exactitude at an
expense of perpetually corrected error, cease-
less readjustment, and the efflux of a con-
siderable time. Such methods savour of the
"practical," commercial, slipshod races : they
are not consonant with the military habit
of the Eoman mind.

Over a short distance a number of stakes,
set at regular intervals apart, a couple of
hundred yards or so one from the other,
more or less in the direct line, and the exacti-
tude of their direction established by a per-
petual correction of backward and forward
sighting, would suffice. But to produce such
an effect as the plumb between the East Gate
of Chichester and Pulborough Bridge, or
between Silchester and the crossing of the
Anton, or between the passing of the Thames

F

82 THE STANE STREET

at Cricklade and the summit of Highgate
Hill, by staking in this fashion, is hardly
the way such results could have been
arrived at.

I have said that these great alignments
upon the Stane Street nowhere use old pass-
ages or tracks, unless it be at the crossings
of rivers ; and I have pointed out that the
exactitude of these long straight limbs was
a sufficient proof of that.

The crossings of the rivers at traditional
points is an exception to this rule.

It is true that only under barbarous con-
ditions is a stream, even with swampy banks,
a considerable obstacle to travel. Under
civilised conditions a causeway can be made
almost anywhere ; a bridge can be thrown
over any stream of tolerable width ; and the
direction of a main road is more commonly
important than the exact point at which
it shall cross water. But the rule needs
modification. There is, in the first place,
the question of cost. The engineer in civilised
times will prefer to shorten his causeway
as much as possible, in order to avoid ex-
pense. Again, an existing settlement upon
water and an existing bridge offer him a

THE ALIGNMENTS 83

temptation to use them : old crossing-places
with a firm bank upon either side will have
been discovered in barbaric times before the
civilised engineer comes into play, and places
which save one the crossing of several branches
of a divided stream will have been established
by usage and will save the construction of
several bridges.

We may therefore expect a Koman road
sometimes to cross a river at its own choice,
sometimes to follow the choice offered it
by previous conditions of habitation and
travel, and our general rule would seem to
be that where the crossing of a stream is
the terminus of one long straight " limb "
and a point of flexion between one section
and the next, there presumably (unless we
have strong arguments against it) was a
pre- Roman passage of which the Roman
engineers made use.

Similarly, where a Roman road leaves its
alignment for a short space and makes an
" elbow " to negotiate the obstacle of a stream,
we may admit the same conclusion ; but
where its alignment from one distant point
to another is undisturbed at the water, we
may conclude without hesitation that the

84 THE STANE STREET

crossing formed part of the road and was
as novel as the road itself. This is obviously
true, for instance, of the Akeman Street,
where it crosses the Windrush at Asthall,
and probably true of its crossing of the
Evenlode, though not as certainly true of
its crossing of the Cherwell.1

The original line of the Wiltshire Ermine
Way, though it suffers a divergence at the
crossing of the Thames,2 seems to have taken
that small river where it chose. The Fosse
Way is not deflected by the Coin (though
it is by the Yeo). The Northern Ermine
Street seems to choose its own ferry over the
Humber. The Watling Street in its eastern
and its western branch must have passed
over long causeways at Stratford as at
Stretton, though at the former passage a
mile or two's deflection to the right would
have saved a good deal of time : and in

1 In my judgment, Akeman Street negotiates the Cher-
well at Kirtlington in a rather tortuous way, and therefore
presumably follows there an old British trail. I take it
to follow the spur of high land on the west of the stream
and to go up aslant of the steep slope upon the east. But
I have given no particular study to the place, and I only
offer the suggestion.

2 Indeed one of 9°. From 40° N. of W. to 49° N. of W.

THE ALIGNMENTS 85

general a Roman road must be presumed
to have crossed a river at some passage of
its own choosing, unless an earlier crossing
is clearly indicated.1

Judged by this rule, we may suppose it
possible that the crossing at Pulborough was
ancient, though there militates against this
conjecture the width of the marsh upon the
southern side and the suspiciously convenient
alignment of Pulborough Bridge with the
easy way down Bignor Hill. I will discuss
this more fully on a later page.

Similarly, we may be certain that the
crossing of the Upper Arun at Alfoldean
Bridge is due to the Roman engineers alone,
for it comes right upon the exact line which
aims from Pulborough Hill to the shoulder of
Leith Hill.

The crossing of the Mole, on the other
hand, at Burford Bridge, we may still believe
to be an aboriginal passage, from the presence
of hard land upon either bank, and from that
of a "swallow" or lessening of the water
(and sometimes its disappearance) at this
point, as well as from the fact that crossing

1 As it is, for instance, at Corbridge and at Ebchester,
across the Tyne and the Derwent respectively.

86 THE STANE STREET

just at that spot necessitates a turn round
the flank of the Mickleham Hill a little
sharper than would be the case had the
Roman engineers thought themselves free to
choose any crossing-place at random.

As to the crossing of the Wandle by the
Stane Street, if my judgment upon a later
page as to Merton be proved correct, it is
an example of a Roman road leaving its
alignment, and making an " elbow " in order
to use an ancient and secure crossing just
off its direct line, which it leaves immediately
before the crossing and rejoins immediately
after.

The crossing of the Thames itself does not
enter into this argument, for we must pre-
sume the Stane Street to be pointing at an
already existing bridge, if we are to explain
its direction.

We are now in a position to determine
what considerations decided the Roman en-
gineers to plot out the four great "limbs"
of the Stane Street in the fashion they
did.

THE ALIGNMENTS 87

THE FIRST LIMB. FROM CHICHESTER EAST
GATE TO PULBOROUGH BRIDGE

The first limb was set straight from the
East Gate of Chichester to Pulborough Bridge ;
it pointed, therefore, very considerably to
the eastward of the direct road to London,
which would have taken a line over Good-
wood Hill and towards Petworth.

This westward divergence of the first limb
is explained by the difficulty of negotiating
the steep northern escarpment of the South
Downs, coupled with the advantage of cross-
ing the Arun at a point below its junction
with the Rother, so that one stream and not
two has to be passed. It will be seen that
these two advantages coincided in a very
exact and curious manner.

If the contours of the South Downs be
noted on the accompanying sketch map, it
will be seen that there is one place at which
the crossing of them by any road driving
from Chichester north-eastward to the lower
Thames is easiest, and, as we shall see in

88 THE STANE STREET

a moment, that saddle accurately corresponds
with the general alignment from Chichester to
Pulborough Bridge.

It so happens that a crossing of the Arun
in the neighbourhood of Pulborough had ad-
vantages of its own which will be presently
described. Those advantages corresponded
with the advantage of crossing the Downs
at the easiest place, and the drawing of the
line of the first limb from the East Gate
of Chichester to the site of what is now Pul-
borough Bridge, afforded a combination of
all the most favourable circumstances dis-
coverable for the road. There is no better
example in Britain, and perhaps none in
Europe, of the science and of the eye for
country with which these great ways were
designed ; and the trajectory of the Stane
Street over these obscure fourteen odd miles is
a monument to the military genius of Rome.

It will be perceived by the scheme of con-
tour lines upon the map that the South
Downs, west of the point where the Stane
Street crosses them, bifurcate into two
great ranges which are marked upon the
map A A B and A A C respectively. The
southern one, A A B, leads to Goodwood and

THE ALIGNMENTS

89

90 THE STANE STREET

supports near its extremity the famous race-
course. The northern, A A C, which is the
main ridge, after taking a sharp bend north-
wards, runs in its general line a little north of
west towards the Hampshire border. It will
further be noted from a glance at the con-
tours that the escarpment of this main range
towards the Weald and the valley of the
Rother is exceedingly steep. There are
many places where a man walks down it with
difficulty, and many more where he must lead
his horse. Any planning of the road, there-
fore, which would have led it further west-
ward than its actual line, would have been
confronted with these two difficulties : first,
that the road, instead of having to cross the
range where it was single, would have had to
make a double crossing. It would have had
to surmount the Goodwood ridge, dip into
the Waltham-Singleton Valley, rise again
steeply to the main ridge, and on the further
side and escarpment of that, fall precipitously
upon the Weald.

By the line actually taken, the Stane Street,
after a very gradual rise from the plain and
after surmounting two slight elevations, one
above Halnacker the other to the west of

THE ALIGNMENTS 91

Eartham, rises, by the most gradual incline
traceable in any part of the Downs, to their
summit. If the straight dotted arrow drawn
on the map from the East Gate of Chichester to
Petworth (the direct line for London Bridge)
be noted, it will be seen that this line has a
steep hill to breast, after travelling barely
3 miles from the city gate. It is com-
pelled to a rapid climb in Goodwood Park up
to the 400 feet contour. Another mile takes
it well over 500 feet ; but so far from having
surmounted the Downs, it must drop again
suddenly through a steep combe to below
300 feet at K.

This done it must rise again another 400
feet, cross yet another combe, reach a height
of over 700 feet just above East Lavington, and
there come down by one of the steepest banks
in the whole range of the Downs upon the
Weald. To what adventures this line would
lead it further north I will allude later, but
what has just been said is enough to show
that the direct line from Chichester to Pet-
worth would have been unpractical in the
extreme. On the other hand, the line
actually taken exactly utilises the greatest
advantage possible. The Downs are crossed

92 THE STANE STREET

at a height of no more than 665 feet; a gradual
and uniform rise leads to this height, cover-
ing less than 400 feet in over 2J miles.
On the far side, here as everywhere upon
the Downs, the escarpment is precipitous,
but a turn in the line of the hills allows the
Stane Street to follow the bank sideways
and to descend gradually to the Weald ; it

Sea Leuel Sea Leuel

Profiles of the Stane St. & the Direct Line respectively,
in their passage ouer the South Downs.

FIG. 7.

meets the contours gradually and upon a
slight gradient, instead of meeting them
directly, as it would do upon any other align-
ment. The difference is shown graphically
in the accompanying sketch.

Finally, by continuing this line to Pul-
borough Bridge, it takes at its narrowest the
marshy land which at one point or another
in the Rother or the Arun valleys or both it
would have to negotiate. A little to the

THE ALIGNMENTS 93

west and both the Arun and the Kother would
have had to be crossed where their streams
are numerous and meet in very difficult and
wet ground. A little further to the east and
the road would have been compelled to a long
causeway over the marshes that flank the
Arun upon either side. The particular line
chosen involved the crossing of this marsh, of
course, but the crossing of it at a narrow
point ; and we must conclude that the line
thus struck from the East Gate of Chichester
to the crossing of the first considerable stream
which the Stane Street had to deal with, is
the very best its engineers could have chosen.
The two obstacles which lay before it, the
South Downs and the marshy valley of the
Arun, are surmounted in that way, which,
when all difficulties are considered, combined
the greatest economies of effort.

B

THE LIMB FROM PULBOROTJGH BRIDGE TO
LEITH HILL

Once at Pulborough, after so considerable an
eastward diversion, an attempt had to be

94 THE STANE STREET

made by the Roman engineers to recover the
London line by a turn more westerly.

They had also to cross the northern range
of hills which bounded the Weald, and which
lay between them and London, in the easiest
fashion.

To effect this double purpose, a sight taken
to the conspicuous point of Leith Hill, and
somewhere on its eastern shoulder, would
serve ; for Leith Hill is not only the plainest
mark northward from the neighbourhood of
Pulborough, but also stands at the mouth of the
"Dorking Gap," which is sentinelled on its
further side by Box Hill.

The road had to find its way between
Leith Hill and Box Hill, avoiding as much
as possible the steepness of either eleva-
tion. The nearest conspicuous point was to
be found upon the shoulder of Leith Hill.
A direct line could not be drawn so as to pass
between these two steep and high hills.

To avoid a climb up the great height of
either summit, it was necessary to pass round
the eastern shoulder of Leith Hill, and then
to pass round the western shoulder of Box
Hill, as the contours on the map opposite
show.

Leith HU1
900 feet + J

Land over
500 feet.

A Point on Boro' Hill 150 ft. high
whence a "sight" was taken to

B the terminus at shoulder
of Leith Hill.

FIG. &

96 THE STANE STREET

It was of advantage, therefore, to take the
direction from the shoulder of Leith Hill, which
could be clearly seen from the heights above
Pulborough, to cross that shoulder as low
down as possible, consistently with the estab-
lishment of a good landmark, and once
there to take a new sight towards the cross-
ing of the Mole and the passage round the
flank of Box Hill.

But in this alignment from Pulborough
Bridge to the shoulder of Leith Hill, the
Roman engineers were confronted with a
difficulty which has perpetuated its memory
in the shape the Stane Street has taken along
this section. From Pulborough Bridge itself
Leith Hill is not visible. Though visible from
the ridge height above Pulborough on which
the church stands, that height is so incon-
spicuous, as seen from Leith Hill, that it
would have been very difficult to take a sight
from one point to the other. The difficulty
was got over apparently in the following way.

Not quite a mile on the way north from
Pulborough Bridge there will be noticed upon
the right beyond the railway, a rather sharp
eminence, which, though it does not form
a summit of its group (and is only upon the

THE ALIGNMENTS 97

side of the general slope upwards towards
that summit at Kedfold), is so placed as to
afford a good view of Leith Hill and to be
seen clearly from Leith Hill against the sky.
This point is just behind the farmhouse
known as New Place, and the eminence in
question is known locally as Borough Hill. It
was towards this point that the alignment from
Leith Hill was taken, and from this point
towards Leith Hill that that alignment ran.

Had that alignment been continued, how-
ever, without deflection, it would have missed
the crossing of the Arun at Pulborough Bridge
by some three-quarters of a mile, and would
have struck the river at the point where the
marsh is at its widest.

So what was done was this. The align-
ment Leith Hill to Borough Hill was kept up
exactly until it reached a point close enough
to Pulborough to permit a new, short sight
being taken, which should lead the road
directly to Pulborough Bridge. (See pp. 59
and 95.)

This point of flexion occurs at the south
wall of a building called Todhurst Farm. It
is exactly 3|- miles from the southern
end of Pulborough Bridge, and these 3f

98 THE STANE STREET

miles may be regarded as a very short
separate limb uniting the first long one,
which ends at Pulborough, with the second
long one, which ends at Leith Hill. The
angle between this short "junction," and the
main line, which runs absolutely straight from
Todhurst Farm to the shoulder of Leith Hill,
is one of 7°, the main line being directed
22° 30' East of North, and the short 3f miles
from Pulborough Bridge to Todhurst Farm
29° 30' East of North.1

The precise point upon the shoulder of Leith
Hill which was chosen for the terminus of
the second limb, was that spot upon the
eastern slope of Leith Hill which is just high
enough to show clearly above the rolling land
of the Weald and yet just low enough to
come below the steep part of the slopes.

The Weald rises in great billows up to-
wards the county boundary, and a mark set
much below the 400-foot contour might be
invisible, and would always be doubtfully

1 Similar slight deflections, due to the same cause, are
to be found upon many other Roman roads. That running
north and east from Vernand, in Picardy, for instance,
presents a most interesting point of flexion of the same
sort, due to the difficulties of the broken ground west of
Bellenglise,

THE ALIGNMENTS

99

observable, from the lower and distant part
of the district. On the other hand, Leith
Hill is 965 feet high. It was important to
save the road at once from too high and

Section along

C.-D.
Heights X.5

A'

Section along

A.-B.
Heights XtD

Sea Leuel

FIG. 9.

too steep a climb. The slope of Leith
Hill towards the east is upon the sections
shown above, and it is evident that the road
using the platform at X could save the steep
bank above yet view the Weald.

100 THE STANE STREET

To all these necessities the Stane Street
here conforms.

A house called Moorhurst stands just above
the 400-foot contour on this eastern slope
of Leith Hill and at the point just below
where the slope begins to grow steep ; about
350 yards up from this farm, northward
by a little west, and in a field which
lies immediately south of a wood called
Ryefield Copse, was set up the mark which
formed a terminus, a northern terminus for
the second limb coming from Borough Hill,
near Pulborough, a southern terminus for
the third short limb, which was plotted so
as to take Dorking Gap. I will further
discuss this point when I come to the details
of the road.

THE LIMB FROM LEITH HILL TO JUNIPER
HILL (ALSO CALLED JUNIPER WOOD
HILL).

The third short limb which negotiates the
Dorking Gap is the most tricky part of the
road and the one that needs the closest ex-

THE ALIGNMENTS 101

animation, if we are to understand how it
was plotted out.

From the point close to Moorhurst, where
the northern terminus of the second limb
was established, if you look forward in the
direction of that limb and imagine the Stane
Street continuing its old direction unchanged,
you will discover that direction to point right
at the steepest and highest part of the Box
Hill group. It makes for the precipitous
slope of Brackham Warren, and for the very
highest summit of those heights.

If you take a direct line from the same
point to London Bridge it differs by less than
one degree from a continuation of the second
limb * and the same precipitous slope is met
by it.

It was the business of the Roman engineers,
of course, to avoid such a difficulty as that,
and to turn it.

From where this terminus stood, upon the
shoulder of Leith Hill they had a view round
the corner of the valley of the Mole and of

1 On which account one might maintain that the whole
system from Pulborough Bridge to London Bridge was
ultimately based on one great alignment. I doubt it. The
coincidence is not absolute.

102 THE STANE STREET

its passage through the North Downs, which
is called " Dorking Gap."

They might, of course, have directed the road
on to the river valley and followed that valley
right round the flank of the hills, but that
would have condemned them to a marshy soil
in the latter part of the section and would
have forbidden themselves that plotting out
of a straight alignment, which was essential
to their method.

What they did, therefore, was to look for
a conspicuous point, not too high, upon the
shoulder of the Box Hill group, and this
they discovered a little above the 300-foot
contour upon the slope of the promontory
marked A B upon the accompanying sketch,
and they fixed their new terminal at the
point C, in which is now Juniper Wood. It
stood 5 miles and 6 furlongs from their
existing terminal, D, upon the shoulder of
Leith Hill. To that point C was their align-
ment of the third limb drawn, and from it,
as we shall see later, the alignment of the
fourth limb was taken, which led that fourth
limb from C to London Bridge.

But the point C is not visible from the soil
of D, the Leith Hill terminal of the second

THE ALIGNMENTS

103

500

300

D = Term/net/ Point on Leith Hill
C= s> " - Juniper Hill

A-B= Spur called Juniper Hill
Contour Lines

Alignment of the Stane Street
=•— Continuation of the alignment
of the second "limb"

SCALE OF MILES

FIG. 10.

104 THE STA: z STREET

limb. The hfll called Tower HOI, just to
the south of Dorking, intervenes and hides C
from the view of a spectator on the ground
atD.

It is a very close matter.1 From quite a
low Bilging upon the site of die Leith Hfll
terminus one overlooks the corner of Tower
Hill and catches the point C upon the
promontory of Juniper Wood. Whatever
method they arranged for casting fins align-
ment, whether, as is probable, by setting
intermediary marks upon Tower Hill, or
directly by establishing two low scaffoldings
at either end of this limb, one at C on
Juniper Hill and the other at D upon the
shoulder of Leith Hill, this was the line they
plotted out.

But unlike any other of the gnat straight
sections of the road, this section was unable
to keep to its alignment for more than a
small proportion of the whole way. It had
hardly started when it had to deflect some-
what to the left or west, in order to avoid
the isolated steep of Tower HilL The de-

» P is jmt wmdar 500 iuui • j 41D «fc it» IMML CM

THE ALIGNMENTS 105

flection, by the time the road had got to the
Pipp Brook, was as much as 600 yards.

It had then to recover the alignment by
bending eastward again, and it even had to
go a little too much to the east, in order to
catch the exact crossing-place at Burford
Bridge, which tradition and experience had
fixed as the best passage for the river Mole.

When the Stane Street had passed the river
at Burford Bridge, it yet could not keep the
exact alignment, on account of the steepness
of the contours just beyond the river. It
had to bend somewhat westward again, until,
nearly following the line of the present road,
it came to the gardens of what is to-day
Juniper Hall. But though at this point
the terminal mark stood just above, not
300 yards off, the road could not reach
it The hill was here too steep. It had to
go round the mark, somewhat below it to the
west, in order to take the curve of the pre-
cipitous hill ; and thus it is that at the end
of the third alignment and the beginning of
the fourth the terminal mark from which
those alignments were taken does not lie
upon the road at alL

106 THE STANE STREET

D

THE FOURTH LIMB, FROM JUNIPER HILL
TO LONDON BRIDGE

The beginning of the fourth alignment is
but a continuation of this flanking way round
the shoulder of the hill for a matter of not
quite three-quarters of a mile. The actual
road and the beginning of the straight align-
ment from Juniper Wood to London Bridge,
very nearly correspond with the Lodge in
Juniper Hill Wood. But the straight line
plotted out crosses immediately afterwards, a
deep and precipitous combe, around which
the road is compelled to skirt to the east-
ward.

The Stane Street and its theoretical align-
ment from the terminus in Juniper Hill
Wood on to London Bridge, do not coincide
until we reach an unmistakable point A just
above the 400-foot contour, and exactly 500
yards south-east of Cherkley Court. There
the winding way suddenly becomes dead
straight for 2 full miles, and exactly coin-
cides with the alignment in question.

THE ALIGNMENTS

107

400

Contour Map

to show Stane Street North of

Juniper Hill, with argument

in favour of its original direct

alignment.

• • •• Direction of Road

totvtirds Croydon

Known portion of Koad

-. — ... — — .— Alignment towards

London Bridge

200-^-^ — Contours of 100 feet
C — Terminal Point on Juniper Hill

Box Hill

SCALE OF MILES

? ? *

FIG. 11.

108 THE STANE STREET

From that point onwards I have concluded
that the Stane Street followed an undeviating
straight line to the crossing of the Thames
at London Bridge.

This assertion cannot be made without
admitting the considerable criticism to which
it is subject.

From the point B, 200 yards south of
Thirty Acres Barn, in the parish of Ashtead,
all trace of the road upon this alignment
is probably lost. Some observers think they
have discerned portions of it here and there,
especially in the parish of Cheam ; but the
evidence is too doubtful to be admitted, and
until something more certain is available
my conviction that the road, though now
lost, ran directly for London Bridge from
this point must depend upon proof of another
type.

Against this theory it must be noted that
a way which is traditionally of Roman origin
diverges at this point near Thirty Acres
Barn from the Stane Street, and points in
the direction of Croydon and what was once
conjectured to be the site of Noviomagus.
This divergent track has survived. It can
be followed very nearly to the Grand Stand

THE ALIGNMENTS 109

of Epsom Kacecourse. On the direct line
which I suppose for the true Stane Street no
relic remains. Many therefore would assert
that the Stane Street was not continued on
any direct alignment towards London Bridge,
after this point near Thirty Acres Barn, and
they would bring in support of their con-
tention such arguments as the following : —

1. Branching off at this point would lead
the road to a main road leading from Shore-
ham up to London through Croydon. It
would therefore economise expense.

2. Now a road certainly ran — though only
two short sections survive — from the mouth
of the Adur northward through Croydon,
and this road a deflection of the Stane
Street by Thirty Acres Barn would ultimately
join.

3. It would get rid of the difficulty of
crossing the Wandle, whose flat and marshy
valley lies just athwart the straight line
between Epsom Downs and London Bridge.

4. The diverging road has certainly been
in continuous use at some time, since the
first part of it survives, while there is no local
trace of the straight way pointing towards
London Bridge.

110 THE STAKE STREET

Against these arguments I would set the
following : —

1. There certainly was a road leading from
the Adur mouth through the neighbourhood
of Croydon to London,1 though most traces of
it have disappeared : but if the Stane Street
had been intended to be deflected into it no
one would have been at the expense of con-
structing the difficult bit through Dorking Gap
in order to effect a deflection of this sort north
of the Surrey Hills. The obvious thing would
have been to drive a straight line from Pul-
borough to Reigate, and it would have been
folly to have engineered the difficult passage
of the Surrey Hills for nothing.

2. The crossing of the Wandle is not so
difficult as the first crossing of the Arun, nor
more difficult than a hundred river crossings
up and down England which the Romans
created to serve their military needs. It is
not comparable, for instance, to the enormous
business of bridging the Mersey marshes,
which was done in two separate places.

3. The disappearance of the road northward

1 Only two sections have been found, but though short
they are in an exact alignment one with the other, and no
degree of pedantry can overlook such evidence.

THE ALIGNMENTS 111

of Epsom Downs is a strong negative argu-
ment : but it must be remembered — (a) That
the diverging road itself disappears after the
first few hundred yards, and that there is
no trace of it between Epsom Eacecourse
and Croydon ; (6) that, as I shall argue
later when I come to the details of the road,
absolute disappearances of a Eoman road,
and that not on arable land only, but just
where a road can best survive, are, over
stretches quite as long, a regular feature in
the modern topography of Gaul and Britain.

But to these merely rebutting arguments
one may bring up much stronger positive
ones in aid.

We have the line of burials in Southwark
pointing to a south-westerly road.

We have the term Newington Causeway.
We have the great foundation of Merton
Abbey right on the supposed line, and rooted
in origins certainly of the Middle, perhaps
of the Dark Ages.

We have the royal use of Merton (a royal
villa) during the Dark Ages, and the going
to and fro between it and London.

We have, what is very important, the
contours involved. The accompanying sketch

112

THE STANE STREET

shows these very plainly ; an alignment from
the terminus I have spoken of to London
Bridge follows an easy and exact slope. The
divergent line, though useful perhaps as a
junction line, has to cut across difficult and
abrupt contours.

The last and much most weighty argument

— 400 feet above the Sea

t 4 5 6

Scale of Mites
Heights multiplied by 50

FIG. 12.

is the fact that for the first 2 miles and
more from the terminus, the direct align-
ment points not approximately towards, but
right at London Bridge ; and this can no
more be a concidence than can the direct
pointing of the alignment over the South
Downs towards Pulborough Bridge. This
seems to me an argument so clearly con-
vincing that it hardly needs support.

THE ALIGNMENTS 113

With this we conclude the fourth great
limb of the Stane Street and the last of
its series of alignments.

We have next to consider the military
character of the road as shown in its series
of camps or fortified halting-places, and
established at distances of one day's march
each from its neighbour, for which our con-
jecture of their use and the titles of antiquity
suggest the name of Mansiones. For though
this name refers to a civil rather than a
military use and is concerned with the posting
relays on the great roads of the Empire, yet
the size of the works that remain and the
chief use of all such ways during peace lean
me towards the latter title.

m

THE CAMPS OR MANSIONES

The use of the Stane Street as a military
way involved a feature not accidental or
probable, but necessary : and this feature
was a number of stations the distance be-
tween which should correspond to a day's
march, and in which the troops should rest
at the end of each stage.

These stations would presumably be in the
form of camps. The size of these fortified
points would not limit the marching units :
they might be of a much smaller size than
could accommodate the occasional arrivals,
which might go under canvas outside their
ramparts. But they would afford per-
manent stations of defence, contain per-
manent small garrisons, defend the difficult
passages, and stable relays of post horses for
civilian use. For all these purposes a small

area would suffice. Such camps would be
in

THE CAMPS OR MANSIONES 115

exactly organised and would contain tem-
porary wooden, or permanent brick or stone,
buildings.

Now, an average day's march for a con-
siderable force is a matter of from 12 to
13 miles.1

1 The comparative shortness of this distance may sur-
prise the reader. Men are, of course, capable of very much
more, and the feats of endurance which have been accom-
plished by troops under special circumstances — especially
bodies of small size — abound in military history. But
when there is no occasion for haste, the average set here
in the text is that which will be found to agree most
nearly with experience. The time between the arrival
of the head of the column and the moment when its rear-
most files reach the appointed halting- place must be con-
sidered. If authority may be quoted, we have Schellendorf,
who lays it down that a day's march should not exceed,
save in emergency, an average of 22 kilometres ; Colley,
who estimates from 12 to 15 miles' actual march a day ;
Rustow, who considers a considerable body of troops for-
tunate if it marches from 15 to 20 kilometres in a day
(that is, from a little over 9 to 12£ miles) ; and the regu-
lations of modern armies, which all lay down some such
unit.

If example be preferred, we have Marlborough's advance
to the Danube in 1704 covering, counting rests, only a little
over 10 miles a day ; the Fifth German Army Corps in
the Franco-Prussian War, averaging in actual day's march-
ing under extreme pressure 13£ (with a maximum single
day of 21 miles), and, counting rests, only 10£ ; the week's
dash of the Turkish Army to Plevna which, for all its
necessity for haste, averaged but 14£ miles; and, quite
recently, Lord Roberts' advance on Johannesburg, of which

116 THE STANE STREET

We find, accordingly, the first of these
halting-places precisely 13 miles from the
East Gate of Chichester at Hardham Camp,
and the construction of this work upon the
south side of the marsh is in part explained
by the desire of the Koman authorities not
to make the stage between Chichester and
the first halt too long a one. Other reasons
for choosing a site south of the Arun rather
than to the north of it are suggested else-
where, but the necessity for not exaggerating
the first or last stage of a march, to which
allusion will later be made, was undoubtedly
predominant.

Had the first camp been designed on the
further or northern side of the Arun, it could
hardly have been constructed in the midst
of the occupied area which the Koman re-

16 days' actual marching averaged 12 miles a day. The
Grand Army of Napoleon accomplished perhaps the best
piece of marching which the history of war records. Speed
was in the campaign of 1805 the principal element necessary
to success. The corps which had the longest distance to
travel, that which started from Boulogne, covered the first
400 miles, with very few sick, in an average day's march
of 14-8 miles ; but the feat was exceptional.

These and an indefinite number of other examples could
be quoted to show that the unit mentioned in the text
IB a fair average.

THE CAMPS OR MANSIONES 117

mains at Pulborough, but lately conspicuous,
prove to have existed. It would, again, hardly
have been constructed in the hollow where
the railway now crosses the road north of
that place ; the first convenient place for
building a camp north of the Arun would have
been the hill beyond the railway-crossing,
and this point would have been more than
15 miles from Chichester and waterless.

We must look for the second halting-place
at some distance north of Hardham, more
or less equivalent to the distance which
Hardham itself is from the East Gate of
Chichester. This second station we find situ-
ated somewhat as Hardham is, just south of
the second crossing of the Arun at Alfoldean
Bridge.

The second stage thus formed is not quite
as long as the first one. It is just under
the 12 miles ; but, had the camp been con-
structed any further north, it would have
lacked good water.

Now, in such a series one might think it
a fairly easy matter to discover the third and
fourth halting-places.

The total distance from the East Gate of
Chichester to the Thames at London Bridge,

118 THE STANE STREET

following the line of the Stane Street, is, as we
have seen on p. 58, 56 miles and 7-J- furlongs.
Five average stages, one of them, the last per-
haps, a little short, would account for this dis-
tance. We must therefore look for four camps,
which will divide the whole line into five more
or less equal stages.

The first and second stages we have found
remaining in ample evidence till modern
times at Hardham and Alfoldean respectively,
and, as I have said, it would seem an easy
matter to fix, within a comparatively small
area, the probable position of the third and
the fourth.

As a matter of fact, the task presents certain
difficulties. No remains have yet been dis-
covered which warrant us in positively fixing
the site of either of these two northern camps
upon the road, but the absence of positive
proof is not unaccountable and it merits
discussion.

Let us approach this discussion by postu-
lating the existence of these two stations.
They once existed as surely as did Hardham
and Alfoldean camps. The thing is not hypo-
thetical, but certain.

There could have been no organised

THE CAMPS OB MANSIONES 119

military communication along such a road
unless such halting-places were regularly
established. To move large bodies of civilised
men to and fro constantly by a single road,
without reliance upon towns or military
stations at the end of each stage, is physically
impossible. If we do not find such halting-
places in positions where we should approxi-
mately expect them, it can only be because
they have disappeared, if in the open, or
because they correspond with some place of
long and continuous habitation.

We must not expect any stage, as I have
said, to be more than 13 miles. It may
be usefully as short as 10 or even 9. An
average for the whole distance would give us
just under 12 (11-3875).

Now, following up exactly 12 miles
from the last of these stations, that of Alfol-
dean Bridge, and measuring along the line of
the Stane Street, including the bend round
the corner of Leith Hill, the twelfth mile
takes us well beyond Dorking to a point
north, and near to Bradley farm, where the
railway crosses a spinney some 200 yards west
of the main road from Dorking to London.

But the camp could not have stood at this

120 THE STANE STREET

precise spot. It is not upon water. It is com-
manded somewhat from above (even at the
low ranges of missile weapons in those days) ;
and it is not likely that its circumvallation
would have wholly disappeared in the open
country, even upon good arable land such as
is the land near this spot.

Where, upon the analogy of the other two
camps, should we look for this third mansio f
Preferably, not far from the crossing of a
stream. The camp at Hardham commands
the crossing of a stream, and is protected by
it. Good water is near at hand, and the
marsh defends one approach to the place.
Upon such an analogy we might expect the
third mansio to lie nearer the thirteenth than
the twelfth mile, and to be constructed some-
what near the left bank of the Mole, on the
south of Burford Bridge. But there is here
no trace of it, and even less reason for its dis-
appearance than at that point exactly upon the
twelfth mile which we have decided to reject.

Moreover, to take a longer rather than a
shorter stage at this point of the road would
have been an error in organisation, for the
two first stages were already over the average,
and, with a third so advanced, the remaining

THE CAMPS OR MANSIONES 121

distance to London Bridge would have been
hardly sufficient to afford two full stages.
The only other water available is the Pipp
Brook, which would be amply sufficient for
the supply of such a station, and which
afforded, with the help of certain wells, the
water supply of Dorking for centuries, though
not affording any serious defence.

The conclusion is forced upon us that the
third camp upon the road lay within the
limits of Dorking itself, and may very
probably have been the origin from which
Dorking sprang.

Such a site would account for the dis-
appearance of the Vallum, for nothing de-
stroys old earthwork like building and
continued rebuilding upon a thickly in-
habited site. Nay, not only does the presence
of a human community tend to obliterate
regular earthworks, but even substantial
buildings are lost in such spots, because they
are more thoroughly quarried there than else-
where when they begin to fall into ruin, and
the traces of them more completely disappear
in continuous towns than in wild districts.1

1 Thus it is remarkable that the camp at Hardham has
yielded no stone or brick, standing as it does close to the

122 THE STANE STREET

This lesson in archaeology is deeply im-
pressed upon any man who has studied the
remains of Rome in North Africa.

There deserted cities, such as Timgad, stand
in their entirety. Cities where the popula-
tion dwindled, such as Csesarea, are less pre-
served. Sites where human habitation has
long been the rule, and where population has
been dense, obliterate all but the great public
monuments, and occasionally even these are
wholly destroyed. Lambsesis was a continu-
ous settlement ; it has far less to show than
Timgad, near by. As for Hippo, that great
city of St. Augustine, not a trace even of its
foundations now remains, but Bone has arisen
at its expense.

It is to be presumed, therefore, that this
third station, which must have existed some-
where between Mickleham Hill and Holm-
wood, has been obliterated by the perpetual
turning and re-turning of the inhabited earth
at Dorking ; and that either some four acres in
Dorking (for of such extent were these small

site of the Priory with its numerous buildings in the
Middle Ages and within easy hauling distance of the popu-
lated bank of the Arun at Pulborough, while Alfoldean, in
the depths of the Weald, and in a spot deserted by men,
has yielded ample relics of buildings.

THE CAMPS OR MANSIONES 123

camps) bore quadrilateral earthworks which
sheltered the marching troops ; or that a small
town, of which Dorking is the descendant to-
day, received them.

Now, on the analogy of the two other
camps which this Roman road directly tra-
verses, and with our knowledge of the Stane
Street having been discovered by digging in
the north-west corner of the old churchyard
at Dorking, one might suggest a site to the
south of the west end of the High Street,
and perhaps including part of that thorough-
fare ; but the suggestion would remain mere
conjecture had we not other reasoning to
guide us.

We have such reasoning available. The
point is one only to be arrived at by converging
lines of proof ; but it is of interest to establish
it, and to show why the writer regards it as
a matter historically certain that Dorking is
of Roman origin, and was the third mansio
upon the road from Chichester to London.

Arguing from stations that are known to
this unknown station, we find attaching to the
two known stations the following characters.

(1) Each is, as might be expected of a
Roman work, quadrilateral and nearly square

124 THE STANE STREET

(2) The road passes through each.

(3) Each measured somewhat over 450 feet
square.

(4) Each was in the close proximity of
running water : Hardham within 200 yards,
Alfoldean closer still. Alfoldean is right
on the stream; Hardham is as close to the
stream as it was possible to build, consider-
ing the nature of the 200 yards of ground
between the river and the hard ledge which
supports the camp.

(5) Each stands to the south (or thither
side, looking from London) of the stream
upon which it is built. If we knew the
reason of this last feature, we might use it
further in our argument. As it is, we can
only note the fact and suppose it to have
some reason other than mere accident. We
must suppose that the military or police plan,
to serve which the Stane Street was built,
regarded the presence of an obstacle towards
the north or London side, as more useful
in preserving a station from attack, than
an obstacle upon the Chichester or south
side.

Now, to these analogies add certain other
known or obvious facts and probabilities.

THE CAMPS OR MANSIONES 125

We know that most towns growing up round
an old Roman settlement of any sort have
the centre of their lives at the original
Roman centre. The exceptions (such as
Manchester and Huntingdon and Cambridge)
probably represent settlements which grew up
outside the entrenchment of the fort.

Next we must remember that the disap-
pearance of Roman earthwork in a district of
permanent habitation will only coincide with
the built ground ; where the earthwork ran
into fields or open space it would remain,
whether Roman or pre-Roman or post-
Roman ; or at least it is much more likely
to remain in such places than where there
has been continual building and rebuilding.

We can further be certain that the station
would be traced upon a fairly level piece of
ground, and upon a dry one.

Finally, we have old but uncontradicted
and valuable testimony to the effect that
the Stane Street was seen when graves were
dug in the north-west corner of the old
churchyard at Dorking,1 as at B in the sketch
map on p. 131.

1 Both Campden and Aubrey testify to this. See also
the article in Surrey Archceologia, vol. x. pp. 104, 107.

126 THE STAISTE STREET

Now, let us put all these together and see
the limits wherein we can not but determine
the Dorking station to have lain.

We must look for it close to its water supply,
and therefore somewhere to the south of the
Pipp or Mill Brook, and fairly close to that
supply of running water.

Now, we cannot put the camp on the brook
to the north of the church and regard the
traces of the road in the churchyard as the
entry towards the south gate of the camp.
We cannot put it thus north of the church-
yard and between the church and the brook,
for there is not room there for an entrench-
ment between 400 and 500 feet square.

We must look for it, therefore, somewhere
to the west or east or south of the
churchyard.

It could not lie right on the brook to the
west of the churchyard, for not only would
its northern entrenchment then have lain
upon somewhat marshy ground (and, what is
more, on open ground still remaining, and
ground which has been still more open until
recent times, which would surely bear traces
of its wall and ditch), but (what is convincing)
no line drawn through the centre of such a

THE CAMPS OR MANSIONES 127

position towards Burford Bridge could
possibly have taken the road out of the camp
through Dorking churchyard.

It could not lie to the east of the church
for exactly the same reason, and also be-
cause such a position would have involved a
sharp, extraordinary, and quite useless bend in
the road.

On the other hand, we cannot put it very
far to the south of the churchyard, because
a square of 500 feet every way would only
just fit in between the south of the church-
yard and the abrupt slope of Eose Hill.

All this would lead us to expect the
station to have lain somewhere to the south,
or nearly to the south of Dorking churchyard,
and quite close to it on that side.

But we can find surer ground for this spot.
We get further indications from the line of
the road at this part.

The Stane Street, after it turns the corner
at the shoulder of Leith Hill, points straight
for Burford Bridge, where we know that, as
a fact, it crossed. As we have seen, in speak-
ing of the alignment here, it was not able to
go right across the broken ground of Eose
Hill and Tower Hill, to which it points. It

128 THE STANE STREET

had to be deflected somewhat to the left, or
west, in order to pass round the base of these
steep knolls ; but it would, when it had passed
round their base, try to get back as quickly
as possible, for the sake of economy, to its
main alignment. That is what we find it
doing, for instance, between Bignor and Pul-
borough. Every unnecessary yard to the
west would be a loss or extra expense of
labour and material, very unlike Eoman
workmanship and, as a fact, without parallel
in any one of the many great Roman roads
which we can study.

In connection with all these considerations,
it is impossible to place the station in any
position such that its centre should have been
more than 100 yards south of the point
where the High Street and West Street meet,
or more than 100 yards west of the same point.
We have, therefore, at that point a very good
approximation to what must have been the
centre of the work. Put it further west and
you find yourself out of the alignment of the
road as it comes in from the south, while you
also make it impossible for the road leaving
the camp towards the north and Burford
Bridge to touch the corner of the old church-

THE CAMPS OR MANSIONES 129

yard. Take it further south, and you infringe
upon the abrupt slope of Rose Hill. Further
east, as I have said, you cannot put it with-
out presupposing useless divergence and ex-
pense, as well as making impossible its passage
through the churchyard. Further north the
brook stops you. Finally, this point, where
West Street and High Street meet, exactly
corresponds to the oldest and most con-
tinuously occupied portion of the town.

Add to all this the recent discovery of the
road crossing West Street at the point A in
the accompanying map, and you can hardly
put the camp elsewhere than in the angle
between West Street and South Street, and
just where they meet.

Such are my reasons for believing that the
third station upon the Stane Street was a
quadrilateral, including the present meeting
of the Three Ways at Dorking, and mainly
in the angle between South Street and West
Street, and it is to this point that I shall
count the third march of the road to have
lain from Alfoldean northward.

This third day's march along the road
from the south of Alfoldean Bridge to this
point in Dorking town is, measured along

I

130 THE STANE STKEET

the road itself, exactly 10 miles and 1155
yards. This is a shorter distance than the
first two stages, but one of them is a trifle
long, and it is obviously designed on the
same plan for a day's march as these first
two sections. Moreover, it leaves two reason-
able stages for the remaining distance to
London.

The site of the fourth mansio is even more
difficult to establish ; or rather our conjec-
tures with regard to it (for we can do no
more than conjecture) cannot even be as
precise as the suggestion made with regard
to the supposed mansio at Dorking.

There are two reasons for this : the first
is that, as we approach London, we come to
districts where the earth has been turned
and re-turned in full confusion for centuries,
and where modern building has obliterated
every ancient landmark.

The second reason is, that the track of
the road itself is only conjectural after the
neighbourhood of Thirty Acres Barn at Epsom
Downs.

There are further difficulties. The dis-
tance between Dorking and the southern
extremity of London Bridge, following along

THE CAMPS OR MANSIONES 131

J

Conjectural limits of f/ie
[Camp

.—Alignment from terminal
at Leith Hill to terminal
on Juniper Hill

lfn/Vg>-n streets of DorMLng
Contours in feet
Old Limits of Ckurch Yard

nown portions of Stane
[Street

— — — Conjectural portions of
LStane Street

FIG. 13.

132 THE STANE STREET

the line, first actual and later conjectural, of
the Stane Street, is no more than 22 miles ;
so that, with the third camp situated within
the limits of Dorking, a stage exactly bisect-
ing the distance would yield two sections
of 11 miles each. If, as is more probable,
a long stage were plotted out from Dorking,
with the object of making the last march
into London designedly short (on the analogy
of similar approach to large cities throughout
the Empire), l then this means that the
mansio for which we are looking must be
sought yet further and will perhaps bring us
into the hopeless maze of the South London
suburbs.

Let us examine the evidence and see what
we can make of it.

So far as the discovery of positive evidence
goes, that is perhaps no longer obtainable.

One must never be quite certain of such
matters, for the negative argument in history
is always a weak one, and, in the case of a
Roman road in particular, the spade brings

1 The first or last stage in arid out of a great city was always
short. The longer time required under the conditions of
a halt in such a place or of departure from it, the exit or
entry through traffic, the hour required for finding or
leaving scattered billets, account for this.

THE CAMPS OR MANSIONES 133

up unexpected testimony year by year.
Meanwhile, it seems unlikely that in so
frequented a neighbourhood as that between
Epsom and the London suburbs, cut recently
— that is, during the wide development of
archaeological research — by so many railways
and other works, some past evidences of a
Roman military station should fail us unless
that station were situated on a spot inhabited
throughout the Dark and Middle Ages.

The problem is further complicated by the
fact that the route of the Stane Street from
Epsom Downs to London Bridge is necessarily
conjectural, and that authorities will even
be found (I have argued against these on
a preceding page) who believe that the road
was deflected eastward towards Croydon.
Supposing, however, that the road followed,
as I maintain, its normal straight line to
London Bridge, the straight line along which
it points where it is last visible upon the
Leatherhead and Epsom Downs, we may,
following that road, make certain conjectures
as to the site of the fourth station upon
the analogy of the other three, and upon
the analogy of other Roman military ways
throughout Europe.

134 THE STANE STREET

In the first place, we have the normal
maximum for a march of 13 miles, or, at
the very most, of 14 and this takes us,
counting from the junction of West Street
and High Street in Dorking, to the crossing
of the Kiver Wandle in the neighbourhood
of what was for centuries Merton Abbey.

This is the extreme site northwards at
which we can place the fourth mansio. It
leaves for the last day's march along the
conjectural line of the Stane Street to London
Bridge rather more than 8 miles.

Next let us observe that a point exactly
equidistant from Dorking and from London
Bridge (a point which there is no particular
reason to fix on as the station, but which
gives us a measurement) takes us into Non-
such Park, near Cheam.

In the third place, let us remember that
the station must have had water ; and finally,
that, in the absence of remaining and traceable
earthworks, the probability always inclines
towards a long-inhabited site.

The first thing we note is that there is
not along this great stretch of way any such
earthwork remaining. At a point on the Eoman
road half-way between the fifth and sixth

THE CAMPS OR MANSIONES 135

mile from Dorking, and at right angles from
the road down the hill north-west towards
the church in Ashtead Park, you do indeed
come, at a distance of about half a mile, upon
a camp that is probably Roman. Of what
service this bit of earthwork was, we cannot
now tell, but we can be certain that it was
not the station for which we are looking.

Suppose even there were no station at
Dorking, and imagine for a moment this
camp at Ashtead to be the station next
after the Alfoldean one, and you have
a march of 18 miles between camp and
camp. No such distance would have been
laid down for the ordinary march of troops
passing up and down a military road in time
of peace. If we admit the station at Dorking,
the camp at Ashtead is of course a great
deal too close to correspond to the next
station northward. Moreover, the road did
not point at it or pass through it, as it
certainly did through the two known stations
at Hardham and Alfoldean and the conjec-
tural one at Dorking ; it leaves it no less
than half a mile to one side. We may there-
fore neglect the work at Ashtead.

In all the run from what would have been

136 THE STANE STREET

the sixth milestone from Dorking, right away
to the Wandle at Merton Abbey — a run
of 8 miles — the road is lost, as we shall
see when we come to the special discussion
of that section. Following the straight line
which points accurately to London Bridge,
it passes through no continuously inhabited
spot. Epsom and Ewell it leaves to the
left, Cheam and Sutton to the right. It
is, of course, possible that either in Cheam
or in Ewell, and especially the latter, upon
land continually inhabited and still provided
with water, a station, which continuous habita-
tion has caused to disappear, was situated ;
but we have no proof of it in any form,
nor any ground for inference ; and upon the
analogy of Koman stations in other parts
of the Empire where the road approaches
a great city, we should not look for a
station at such a distance from that city.
A mansio at this point would leave a march
of full 14 miles on to London or out of
London; and 14 miles for the first mansio
or first day's march out of London is not
to be thought of. If a long march must
be premised somewhere, the last march but
one would obviously bear it in any thought-

THE CAMPS OR MANSIONES 137

Contour Lines
Later Valley Road
Line of Stane Street
Ashiead Camp

SCALE OF MILES
? ?

aDorking

FIG. 14.

138 THE STANE STREET

out system; 14 miles from Dorking is a far
more likely point, and that gives roughly
the crossing of the Wandle in the neighbour-
hood of Merton Abbey.

This last site has the further argument
to recommend it that it is situated, as is
each of the two known sites, Hardham and
Alfoldean, upon a considerable stream, defend-
ing the crossing of that stream and guarantee-
ing communication across it. Next we have
noted that the neighbourhood was used during
the early Middle Ages for the establishment
of a great monastic institution and one with
origins earlier still. This is an argument of
some importance. The early monasteries
were nearly all of them situated upon these
Roman ways, which, until the thirteenth
century, were the best means of communication
and the arteries of a country. Roman build-
ings often served them as a quarry for their
materials of construction, and in at least a
dozen demonstrable cases in North-eastern
France and Southern Britain, the continuity
of a Roman station with a mediaeval monastic
establishment or the close proximity of one
to the other, is apparent.

Conjecture, then, points to the crossing of

THE CAMPS OR MANSIONES 139

the Wandle by Merton Abbey as the site
of the fourth and last mansio upon the line
between Chichester and London.

We may sum up and say that the total
distance between the East Gate of Chichester
and the South Bridge-head of London Bridge,
a distance 3 miles short of the full 60
miles, must have been divided into five
stations : that of these two are known and
have left clear and indisputable relics — the
first at Hardham, the second at Alfoldean.
That these two establish, the first a march
of 13 miles, the second one of about 12.
That much the most probable situation
to be discovered for the third station is
the town of Dorking : a situation giving a
third station of just under 12 miles. And
finally, that a very possible and even probable
situation for the fourth would be the crossing
of the Wandle near Merton Abbey, which
would give a fourth stage of over 13
miles, indeed nearly 14, leaving, upon the
analogy of many other short last stages upon
the great roads on entering the main towns
of the Empire, only 8 miles for the fifth
and final division of the road.

IV

THE HISTORICAL CHARACTER OF
THE ROAD

The reader of history demands first of a
subject that he should hear the historical
framework within which it is contained.

What dates may be assigned to the origin
of his subject ? — to its use, to its decline,
or its extinction ?

He next requires to hear what events fall
within that framework, and in their case
also to learn with as much exactitude as
possible the date of each and its connection
in time with other things. It is only after
satisfaction upon such points that he is will-
ing to turn to more general considerations,
and the questions of character, utility, and
effect upon the world.

This attitude of the mind towards historical
art is eminently just, and is as reasonable
as that other attitude adopted by the plain

140

HISTORICAL CHARACTER 141

man towards plastic art when he requires
of a picture that first and before any other
consideration it should resemble that which
it represents.

Unfortunately, in the realm where archae-
ology and history meet we cannot satisfy
this prime question of the historical reader.

We are compelled, in the absence of posi-
tive human witnesses and established records
to guess, to approximate, to set large margins
of anterior and posterior dates within which
an event or a use shall be placed, often to
forego altogether the mention of any actual
historical incidents connected with our sub-
ject, and this from the fact that no such
incidents remain on record.

All this unfortunate lack of certainty, which
applies in general to most archaeological dis-
cussion, applies in an especial manner to an
historical discussion upon the Stane Street.

There is no single record remaining of
its continuous use.

There is no record remaining of its use
at some one early period from which we
might infer its continuous use.

There is, of course, no record remaining of
its inception or building, nor so much as an

142 THE STANE STREET

allusion to its decay or repair — at least no
record before quite modern times.

With the exception of the battle (and
Synod ?) of Ockley, the only recorded in-
cidents of the Dark Ages connected with the
road concern the neighbourhood of London,
such as the death of Cynewulf at Merton,
and, as we have seen, and shall see further,
the neighbourhood of London is precisely the
most disputed portion of its whole trajectory.

We are thrown back, therefore, in the
historical discussion of the Stane Street, upon
the evidence afforded by the remains of the
Street itself, aided by analogy.

There are but two positive records of
Roman roads in this country apart from
the evidence which the relics of those roads
themselves afford. The first is the document
known as the " Itinerary of Antoninus." The
second is a late l and probably distorted copy
of a general Roman map, called " Peutinger's
Tables."

We can, indeed, glean from documents of
another character, literary or geological but
not strictly topographical, evidence which
is in the total very large, upon the routes

1 They say of the thirteenth century.

ITS HISTORICAL CHARACTER 143

pursued by armies, commerce, and adminis-
tration in the first four centuries. But with
the exception of Peutinger's tables and the
Antonine Itinerary, we have no positive evi-
dence remaining upon the scheme of Roman
roads.1

Peutinger's tables do not include any
part of Britain save a portion of the south-
eastern coast. The rest of the fragment re-
garding Britain has disappeared.2 The Stane
Street is therefore excluded from this piece
of evidence.

The Antonine Itinerary, the sole remaining
witness, makes no mention of the Stane
Street.

It might be supposed that in the absence
of evidence, in the silence of the Antonine
Itinerary with regard to the Stane Street,
all we had to do was to regret that lacuna,
and to pass on to such evidence as the road
itself affords.

Unfortunately this is not the case, for
there has grown up a deplorable academic

1 The itinerary of "Richard of Cirencester " which
Bertram fathered deserves notice. It is not demonstrably a
mere forgery. But for the Stane Street it has nihil ad rem.

2 Lost in the sixteenth century.

144 THE STANE STREET

habit which will build most readily upon the
very absence of proof, and one must refute
such falsehood before one can proceed to
truth.

Any slight knowledge of intellectual appe-
tites will convince a man that things un-
discoverable or only partially discoverable
exercise a peculiar fascination over the mind,
and that it is where they are concerned that
assertions become most bold and the passions
of controversy most heated.

So it is in the matter of Roman topography,
especially in Britain. Since we cannot tell
with any certitude from contemporary evidence
where the bulk of the roads ran, nor even
with what spots a great number, perhaps
the majority, of our surviving Koman place-
names can be precisely identified, theories
upon the line of the Roman roads are plotted
out with an amazing assurance. The Roman
place-names are identified with quiet security,
or what is worse, the mere lack of evidence is
used for the purposes of confident negation.

It is this last feature, the feature which
I have put in italics, which must be especially
remarked, for it is the peculiar disease of
our time in this province of inquiry.

ITS HISTORICAL CHARACTER 145

For instance, we know nothing of London
between the time when Imperial Rome still
taxed and administered Britain and the
seventh century, when, with the return of
the Catholic Church, writing and record re-
turned. Wherefore a whole school has risen
which will solemnly maintain the fantastical
theory that London in the interval did —
what ? — why, ceased to exist !

No one who has had the good fortune to
escape from the influence of the Universities
will be ready to believe that they make
themselves responsible for so amazing a
statement. It is none the less true. Because
we do not know what happened to London
between one fixed date towards the close
of the Roman Imperial system and another
fixed date (rather more than two hundred
years later) at the beginning of the Dark
Ages, therefore it has been solemnly put
forward under academic authority that London
in the interval disappeared !

It is folly, of course. It is as clear an
abandonment of common sense as it would
be to deny the existence of our homes during
the hours when we happen to be absent from
them. Common sense ought to teach men

K

146 THE STANE STREET

who propound such fantasies that at any
moment in the digging of any new foundation
in London or in the building of any new road,
a piece of positive evidence may blow their
absurdity sky-high.

But an extravagant contradiction of common
sense is an actual incentive to the spirit
which I am here criticising. And the desire
to deny the Roman origins of our civilisation
is so violent wherever the tradition of civilisa-
tion is felt to be disturbing and inimical
to established properties or religious feeling,
that mad theories of the sort are not only
solemnly propounded at Oxford and Cam-
bridge, but have been erected for a couple
of academic generations into a sort of insane
orthodoxy.

What has that to do with the silence of
the Antonine itinerary upon the Stane
Street ?

Why, it has this to do with it : That un-
less we could prove in the most irrefutable
manner that the Stane Street does stand to-
day, and is as certainly the work of Imperial
Rome, the Universities would certainly deny
its existence.

In the matter of a Roman road, their

ITS HISTORICAL CHARACTER 147

vagaries are particularly prominent. Until
plain relics of Roman occupation are dis-
covered, the Roman origin of some town
manifestly and of necessity ancient is not
doubted but actually denied. The inevitable
crossing-place of a river will not be allowed
to be the crossing-place the Roman armies
used unless a discovery of coins or what-not
proves it. A causeway self-evidently the
work of a high civilisation, and with no con-
ceivable authorship posterior to that of the
Roman civilisation, will not be allowed to be
Roman by these Moderns, unless it conforms
to certain rules of construction discoverable
in some remaining fragment of documentary
evidence and gratuitously laid down by them
as universal. Tradition, that sole guide in
matters where direct evidence is lacking, is
simply ignored. You get men saying that
Anderida was no considerable port ; that
Silchester (with walls as long as Bavai's or
Winchester's) was not more than a village ;
that Roman Britain as a whole, with its
active military history and its vast export of
grain, was but sparsely populated and in-
sufficiently held.

One must be prepared in establishing the

148 THE STANE STREET

route of the Stane Street, as in the establish-
ing of any other Roman origin in England,
for an abnormal scepticism and for the official
denial of any point until an overwhelming
accretion of positive evidence is brought up
to break the resistance down ; and the
omission of any mention of the Stane Street
in the itinerary would be sufficient to call
into question the plain fact that the road is
there, and is sufficient to dispute every recon-
struction of its more doubtful sections.

Well, the silence of the Antonine Itinerary
is of very little importance. Of how little
importance we can best understand when we
appreciate what the document is.

Stripped of technical language and of the
affectation of authority, all we can say of the
date of the Itinerary is this : that it was com-
piled at some time between the reign of Had-
rian and that of Constantine, while we may
conjecture (but cannot prove), that, in the
form in which we now have it, it was added to
and expanded in the course of those 'centuries.

Next we must know that the itinerary does
not bear the mark of any complete survey.
It is whimsical, and perpetually refers to what
looks like some individual experience of

ITS HISTORICAL CHARACTER 149

travel, and not like a universal scheme. The
earliest of the English commentators upon
its text, and not the least scholarly, made it
out to be a record of Hadrian's journeys, and
thus explained its vagaries and its omissions.
But in truth we do not know to what acci-
dent those vagaries and those omissions are
due.

In the absence, then, of any positive evi-
dence, we must turn to the evidence of the
road itself and conjecture from analogy the
date of its construction.

The inferior and superior dates of that con-
struction are easy to determine. Direct ad-
ministration from Rome ceased in Britain
with the first years of the fifth century, 407-
410 A.D. The first years of regular and
peaceful administration in which a great
Roman work could have been undertaken,
correspond to the very end of the first cen-
tury after the work of Agricola, 85 A.D.
Within those 300 years we have the date in
which the Stane Street was constructed.

Earlier it cannot have been made. There
was no strategical reason for the undertaking
of so great a work. The paucity of com-
munications was felt in the North, not in the

150 THE STANE STREET

South, during the Northern fighting with
which Agricola's name is connected ; and a
military business of this kind, until complete
control was established over the island, would
have been sheer waste.

Were we dealing with Gaul, the superior
date might be extended. It is possible that
in Gaul military roads upon the Roman plan
were constructed, it is certain that they
were repaired, as late as the sixth or seventh
century, possibly even in the eighth. But in
Britain we can look for no such continuity,
at least, near her southern and eastern
shores.

If we attempt to conjecture at what
moment in those three centuries the great
work was undertaken, we are entirely at
a loss. All we can put together is this : —

It was a purely military work — that is,
it linked up no centres of population nor
canalised any stream of commerce. Its sole
military value was the connection of all
the sheltered creeks and harbours which
run from Chichester to Portchester eastward,
with London and the crossing of the Thames
by a shorter route than the way round by
Winchester. The use of these western har-

ITS HISTORICAL CHARACTER 151

hours came later than the use of the Straits
of Dover as an entry to the country, and was
subsidiary to it. They seem particularly im-
portant towards the end of the Roman oc-
cupation, and it is therefore possible to
conjecture very vaguely that the Stane Street
more probably belongs to the later rather
than the earlier part of those centuries of
Roman rule.

If we were to admit the argument of some
authorities that the first scheme of Roman
roads was connected with a ferry 300 yards
east of London Bridge, and if we were further
to admit that the Stane Street in its last
alignment points towards that ferry, this
would give us an earlier rather than a later
date for the construction of the road.1

But the first contention is doubtful and the
second almost certainly false. The alignment
from the corner of Juniper Hill across the
Wandle points as absolutely at the southern

1 Such a ferry certainly led to the island fortress of Rich-
borough : such another crossed the Humber. But though
the Thames at London was tidal as these waters were, yet
it was far narrower than they, and seaborne commerce had
no call, as on the Humber and round Thanet, to proceed
further : for this among many other reasons given at length
on pp, 54-56, 1 conclude for the Bridge.

152 THE STANE STREET

end of old London Bridge as any measure-
ment will allow.1

If we find it impossible to fix a date save
within such very wide limits for the construc-
tion of the road, it is still less easy to fix,
with the vaguest approximation to accuracy,
the moment when the continuity of its use
was broken.

Nevertheless the discussion is not without
interest. There must have been some one
period up to which, in spite of the decline of
all civilisation, a man could use the Stane
Street in all its length from Chichester to
London Bridge. And there must have been
some date on and after which that continuity
of use was broken.

Now there are several indications to support
the conjecture that the disuse of the Stane
Street as a continuous road came early in the
Dark Ages. Chichester is undoubtedly a city
of Roman origin, and, short of some miracle
specially worked for the benefit of scepticism,
we must believe that it has maintained its
life as a town from Roman times to this day.
Unless, that is, we ajre to accept the extra-
ordinary point of view, for which there is no

1 See measurements in note at the end of the book.

ITS HISTORICAL CHARACTER 153

evidence, whether in analogy or in documents,
that the pirates who raided Britain from the
sea-coast would first destroy a city, then leave
it a heap of ruins, and then be at the pains
of rebuilding it on exactly the same site, we
must believe that Chichester, like every other
Roman town which has survived in this island,
maintained a continuous life.

Well, when the light of recorded history
dawns again upon Britain with the reorganisa-
tion of the Church and the preaching of Her
doctrines in the south and east of the island,
it is remarkable that no record of travel shows
us Chichester (or, for that matter, the Sussex
sea- plain as a whole) in direct communication
with the Thames valley.

That sea-plain has always contained the
great bulk of the population. The Weald,
though not the impassable forest which it has
been made out, was always sparsely inhabited,
and always difficult to cross ; and the little
strip of fertile land between the Downs and
the sea must have suffered heavily during
the pirate raids, Irish and German, which
succeeded the breakdown of Roman power.
We know that this strip of country remained
pagan for one hundred years after the landing

154 THE STANE STREET

of St Augustine, and nothing is more remark-
able in the early history of the Dark Ages in
this country than the isolation of the sea-plain
of Sussex. When St. Wilfrid came to preach
the Faith to Sussex, though we do not know
by what road he came, we read of Sussex in
connection with that mission as attached to
Wessex on the one hand and to Kent upon
the other, with no mention of travel to, or
commerce with, the Thames valley. Cad-
walla, who lurked in the Weald as an outlaw,
fought Kent and later the Isle of Wight, and
became king of Wessex, but there is no story
of his fighting north towards London. It is
true that his story is connected with the
Chilterns also, but it is in no way connected
with the Lower Thames Valley, and when
Cad walla achieved a general overlordship, it
was an overlordship of the south coast of Kent
and Wessex and Sussex. Generation after
generation throughout the Dark Ages we can
follow and find no mention of the use of the
Stane Street, nor even any record of a march
from which we might infer that use. Nearly
one hundred years after Cadwalla and St.
Wilfrid, we are able to fix a limit to which
the road was still used as a highway south-

ITS HISTORICAL CHARACTER 155

ward out of London into Surrey, for in 782
and again in 789 the chronicle tells us of a
synod held at Ockley, and seventy years later
again, in 851, we have the battle of Ockley,
which was fought hard by the Stane Street,
a little south of Dorking and upon the eastern
slope of Leith Hill.

This battle at Ockley proves the continuity
of the use of the Stane Street so late as the
middle of the ninth century between London
and its site. Any earlier breach of continuity
we must conjecture to have taken place further
south than that point.

The battle of Ockley, then, though it took
place in the Surrey village to which tradi-
tion attaches, does not give us a date up to
which there was continuous use of the whole
Stane Street, from Chichester to London. On
the contrary, we may guess from the isola-
tion of Sussex in the seventh century that
the Way had been broken to the south long
before 700, let alone 851. But as the one
historical event certainly connected with the
road in the Dark Ages, it merits a brief dis-
cussion. The reader will not be surprised to
hear that, being the one certain point we
have, it has been disputed.

156 THE STANE STREET

The pirates of the North Sea, pagans
generically known in the history of this
country as " the Danes," had for a generation
and more landed on the shores of Britain in
small bands, burning, pillaging, and destroy-
ing. In the winter of 850-1 some body of
them wintered for the first time on British soil,
in Thanet, and with the spring (as we may
suppose) of 851 a fleet of 350 vessels came
into London river to reinforce them. They
stormed the walls of Canterbury and of London.
Ethel wulf, the father of Alfred, gathered an
army against them. The pirate host had
crossed the Thames into Surrey. By which
road Ethelwulf and the men of Wessex
marched against them we do not know, but
the old British way from Winchester by
Alton leads to the neighbourhood of the
battlefield which was to see the shock
between the two forces. In the words of
the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, " King Ethelwulf
and his son Ethelbald with the levy of
the West Saxons fought against them at
Ockley, and there made the greatest slaughter
among the heathen host that we have heard
tell of to this present day, and there got
the victory."

ITS HISTORICAL CHARACTER 157

The matter is perfectly plain : therefore
it has been doubted.

It has been argued that the battlefield was
more likely to be Oakley, near Basingstoke,
than the traditional Ockley in Surrey.

The motive of this argument is of course
that itch for discovery coupled with a sus-
picion of tradition which is the bane of
modern pedantry. As against the one and
only record, a perfectly clear one, and as
against the tradition of the Surrey village,
the only approach to argument is the spelling
of the place-name in the chronicles " Aclea,"
which might correspond to the place-name
" Aclei " in Doomsday, while Ockley in
Surrey is spelt in Doomsday " Hoclie." As
against this random guess, you have the
fact that Ockley has not only the very power-
ful argument of tradition in its favour, nor
only the presence in its neighbourhood of
a huge fortified ring (which the Danish army
may not have made, but in which they could
have reposed), but the fact that it is at the
meeting-place of two main avenues of ad-
vance. An army coming up from Wessex
by the old prehistoric road, which was in full
use for centuries later, would come upon the

158 THE STANE STREET

Stane Street just opposite Dorking and with-
in an hour or an hour and a half's march of
the battlefield, while an army marching
south of the Thames, as we are particularly-
told in the Chronicle the Danes did, to ravage
Surrey, would have no ancient way open to
them save the Stane Street.1

The Stane Street not only goes right
through Ockley and the traditional field of
the battle, but is more apparent there, has
been more thoroughly studied there, and has
been in more continuous use there than in
any other part of its trajectory. Moreover,
the one document — the only one — which
gives us the original story at all,2 distinctly
tells us that the fight was in Surrey ; that
the Danes had been ravishing Surrey before

1 Mr. Oman, of Oxford, tells us in this connection that
Ockley, standing in the clearest bit of Roman road in the
kingdom, and the best attested and the most widely known
(to the vulgar), is " unlikely " to be the site of the battle,
because " it is far from any road" (Oman's England before
the Norman Conquest, p. 425.) The same authority tells us
that Arundel is on the Adur (England before the Norman
Conquest, p. 169).

2 The Parker MSS. 173, C.C.C.C. In a hand perhaps only
thirty years later than the event. The other accounts are
later still, and the Peterborough MS. [The Laud MS . , Laud
Misc. 636, in a hand three hundred years later, inverts the
order of the land and sea battles.]

ITS HISTORICAL CHARACTER 159

it. Oakley near Basingstoke, is not in Surrey
at all ; it is in Hampshire. Not only is it
in Hampshire, but the great Roman road
along which we are asked to believe that the
Danes marched to this supposed battlefield 1
(it is 2 miles off the Silchester-Winchester
road) never goes anywhere near Surrey.

Nor is this all. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
particularly points out that the Danes
"marched south over the Thames into
Surrey." The road towards Basingstoke
keeps north of the Thames until it is well
past the Surrey boundary.

In a word, this idea that the battle of
Ockley did not take place at Ockley but some-
where else, is but one more instance of that
search for iconoclastic novelty at the expense
of scholarship which is the very disease of
dons. It arises partly from vanity, partly from
a love of local fame, more from a misconcep-
tion of what history is and means, and it is a
detestable ingredient in modern writing. I

1 "In a good position for an army covering Wessex for
an attack from the north-east." Oman again, and pure
guesswork posing as history. There is no mention in the
original of any attack from the north-east. The attack was
by the West Saxons on the Danes from the south-west.
{England before the Conquest, loc. cit.)

160 THE STANE STREET

am glad to have exposed here a conspicuous
example of its charlatanry and folly.

Ockley, then, we may safely take to be a
limit up to which the Stane Street was cer-
tainly used in the ninth century. There is
mention of one other point in the Dark Ages
between Ockley and London, and that is
Merton, where Cynewulf was killed in 78 6. x

Of positive evidence beside these points we
have none, and they seem between them to
lead to some such conclusion as this : —

The Stane Street remained in continuous
•ase right on through the Dark Ages, and
perhaps until near their close, from London
to that point beyond the shoulder of Leith
Hill where the unfertile waste of the High
Weald with its deep clay, bad water, and
thickets begins. There, if we may judge by
the absence of buildings or remains of build-
ings, of monastic establishments, and of all
historical record, by the presence of the county
boundary between Surrey and Sussex, and by
the long isolation of the latter county, the

1 786 ? 786 upon the theory that all dates in this part
of the Chronicle are, like the death of Charlemagne (by far
the best datum point), antedated two years by erroneous
copying. The MSS. of the Chronicles give 784.

ITS HISTORICAL CHARACTER 161

first break in the road occurred. Very
possibly this was due to the ruin of the
bridge over A run at Alfoldean, a little further
south. Whenever this occurred, to proceed
further south along the Stane Street would
have led one nowhere ; and it must further
be remarked that the gap between the road
still in use near Ockley and Alfoldean Bridge
is the worst bit of soil and heaviest going in
all the passage of the Stane Street through
the Weald.1

From Alfoldean Bridge south to Pul-
borough it must have remained in some sort of
continuous use, if only to link up isolated farms;
while in the southern part of this stretch it
continuously united two groups of population
— Billingshurst and Pulborough — and formed
for most of its length the road to another old
inhabited site (of whose origin, however, we
know nothing) — Horsham. South of Pul-
borough was again a break, due presumably
once more to the breach of communications
over a river and a marsh, the breakdown, that
is, of a bridge and a causeway.

1 It must be remembered, however, that a track survives
— all signs of metalling lost on the surface — and is marked
continuous as late as 1725 (Bowies' Map).

L

162 THE STANE STREET

This gap was a serious one, since it took all
the meaning out of the road from Chichester
over the Downs. With the breakdown of
the road in this gap, the Stane Street would
be used from Chichester so long as it served
the sea-plain — that is, up to Halnecker Hill, in
its neighbourhood — but after that its passage
over the uninhabited Downs led nowhere.

When the roadways were linked up again
by the recovery of civilisation, the Stane
Street was not recovered in its entirety.
Those great deflections took place in it which
will be the matter of my next section, and
which so largely correspond to the gaps I
have here noted.

Of further history in connection with the
Stane Street there is none. The Conquest
certainly found a monastic establishment at
Boxgrove, and probably found one at Hard-
ham. The new Norman civilisation also
found (and largely expanded) the establish-
ment at Merton; but of battles, synods, or
civic gatherings, still more of commerce pro-
ceeding along the road, or of any form of
human communication using it for great
purposes capable of leaving historical record,
there is no trace.

THE MODERN DIVERGENCES

WHEN I speak of the " divergences" of
modern roads from the Stane Street, I must
not be understood to mean the slight deflec-
tions of a few yards produced in the course of
1500 years from the original direct line of a
Roman road which is still in use. Such
deflections are notable in the Watling Street,
for instance, and have an interest of their
own. They are to be found throughout
Western Europe upon the line of every sur-
viving Roman road wherever such a road
runs.

The " divergences " I speak of in connec-
tion with the Stane Street are of far greater
interest and importance.

The Stane Street ceased to be a continuous
means of communication between Chichester
and London at a date which, although, as
we have seen, it cannot be precisely estab-

168

164 THE STANE STREET

lished, was certainly so early that any pro-
minent example of divergence in its course,
is an important indication of the influences
which moulded travel in the Dark Ages;
for the divergences from the Stane Street
are concerned only with the disjointed
fragments of the road, as those fragments
were left after its continuous use was in-
terrupted, and after it had sunk into a
series of isolated links connecting, not London
and the sea-coast, but neighbouring points
in any one countryside. On this account
the forces tending to replace the old
Roman line by new ways had the fullest
scope. The new tracks were not tied to
a trajectory in constant and uninterrupted use
and though they originated in the Stane
Street, the most excentric very largely differ
from its course.

I say the divergences apparent on such
a broken-down Roman road are of the
highest historical interest ; and for this
reason, that they provide one of these links
which ill-informed or unobservant men be-
lieve (in the lack of written record) to be
lacking between Roman and medieval times
in Britain.

.THE MODERN DIVERGENCES 165

It is frequently remarked, especially by
modern writers, that the streets of our cities
and the lanes and roads of our countrysides
so little correspond with the old Roman
lines, as to prove a complete devastation of
Britain by the pagan pirate raiders of the
fifth century and the destruction of Eoman
culture at a blow. The thesis till recently
popular in the universities was that of a
conquest of all Eastern Britain by the
Saxon pirates, and the extermination of
the population. That thesis has been suffi-
ciently exploded. The material argument
drawn from the post-Roman course of roads
and streets was, in particular, an example
of that lack of general culture which is
the bane of our universities ; for a little
intelligent travel, a little observation of
Paris or of Orleans, of Aries, of Lyons, or
of Rome itself, should have been enough to
disprove it. In all those towns a similar lack of
correspondence between modern and ancient
streets is apparent. But even with general
culture lacking, a view of this island is suffi-
cient to disprove such follies as the idea of a
pirate "conquest," and the particular case of
the Stane Street clearly discovers the manner

166 THE STANE STREET

in which the modern system of highways
developed out of the Roman model.

The more one studies the particular nature
of the places where the post-Roman roads
diverge from the track of the Stane Street,
the more evident does it become that this
divergence was a gradual and natural affair,
consequent upon the decline of civilisation,
and not upon its sudden destruction by
the barbarians. For one thing, the propor-
tion of the Stane Street which is and has
been used as a highway, is considerable.
If we count only that part of it which is
undisputed, and follow it only from the East
Gate of Chichester to Warren's Barn, near
Epsom Downs (where it is lost), we find that
of a total distance of 41 miles, 20 miles are
metalled highway to-day, and quite 10 miles
more are lanes in constant use. If we count
that part which has been, within historical
memory, used as a road, green or hard, the
proportion is extended from three-quarters to
nearer four-fifths. It must include the way up
Halnacker Hill and down again on its southern
side, the succeeding portion between Seabeach
and the Ertham road, and all that part which
begins at Cumber Corner and descends the

THE MODERN DIVEKGENCES 167

escarpment of the Downs above Coldharbour,
for this is still used as a green road.1

The stretch of 2 miles between the Eartham
road and Gumber Corner, overgrown as it is
with the Nore Wood, cannot be counted as a
road in use ; but with that exception, one may
say that all the 10 miles from the East Gate
of Chichester to the foot of the Downs re-
mained in continuous use for centuries, and
very much the most of it remains so still.

From Pulborough Bridge the whole of the
Stane Street has remained in use continuously,
whether as a metalled road or a trackway,
as far as Alfoldean Bridge, and is so used
still. Much of it has always been used as
a hard way, and early in the nineteenth
century the whole of it was at last metalled
from one crossing of the Arun to the other.
It is true that the short f mile from Alfoldean
Bridge to Bowhook, though it is covered by
a track, does not find that track in exact
correspondence with the Koman road. The
way goes now to one side, now to the other,
of the embankment, and only here and there
precisely corresponds with it. The same is

1 For this and all that follows, see general map at end of
volume.

168 THE STANE STREET

true after Kowhook as far as Monk's Farm,
but during the whole of this stretch of If-
mile there are not 50 yards continuously
which do not either preserve the right-of-
way or are not used by some track. After
Monk's Farm it enters again into continuous
use until we come to the smithy below Oak-
wood Hill ; thence it proceeds f of a mile,
through the greater part of which no right-
of-way has been preserved, and where con-
tinuous travel has deflected from the road,
though we shall see in the description of the
road at this point a very good explanation
for this deflection. But the f of a mile over
and the stream crossed, we have the road
in continuous use again, and for centuries
used as a hard way. To-day it is metalled
throughout for 3 miles, until its use ceases
again at Buckinghill Farm.

From this last point — Buckinghill Farm —
to Burford Bridge is the longest continuous
stretch over which the road fell out of use
in the Weald and north of it. It is, as the
crow flies, just over 65- miles, and along the
line of the road itself somewhat over 6 J.

Burford Bridge and its crossing have always
been in continuous use ; but we have no proof of

THE MODERN DIVERGENCES 169

a continuous use upon the right bank of the
Mole until, at a point a full mile and a half
north and east of Burford Bridge, the lane
reappears in general use as we leave Mickle-
ham Woods and come to the open country
of the Leatherhead Downs. From that point
for 2 miles its continuous use is certain.

The Stane Street, then, though it ceased in
the Dark or perhaps early Middle Ages, to
afford an unbroken approach from London to
the Sussex sea-plain, will afford, in the
various isolated sections into which it fell,
as good an example of the causes and
nature of " Divergence," as good a paradigm
of the gradual and connected succession from
Roman to mediaeval things as you will find
in Europe.

For when we come to examine each section
in which post- Roman usage has abandoned
the road, so far from finding a scheme which
presupposes an abrupt disuse of the Stane
Street, each such divergence can be clearly
accounted for by the changing necessities of
travel in a time of declining civilisation,
and on the analogy of similar divergences
upon the Continent and in other parts of
Britain. We can be certain that there was

170 THE STANE STREET

no sudden cessation of the Roman use, but
only a gradual one.

It concerns us, then, to establish at the out-
set of our examination what causes they were
which led to these gradual divergences from
the fixed Roman line which developed from it
our present scheme of roads.

These causes are three in number.

First, the gradual breakdown of the sur-
face, with the consequent necessity men were
under of picking their way, especially in bad
going (as on clayey land), by a devious suc-
cession of drier strips which led them off the
artificial causeway.

Secondly, the total breach of continuity
which occurred where a bridge had broken
down or a causeway over a marsh had been
swallowed up ; to which must be added the
cessation, as civilisation lowered and central
government disappeared, of any necessity for
rapid and continuous travel between distant
points.

Thirdly, the encroachments which private
interests made upon the public way/Aas the
instrument of central administration, designed
to curb men locally powerful, was lost.

So long as the way was kept up, it formed,

THE MODERN DIVERGENCES 171

as it was designed to form, the most direct
line of communication between one point and
another. As such it would be followed for
its superior surface even when civilisation
declined, save in one exceptional particular,
which must have come early, and is as
follows : —

Travel would tend to abandon the very
steepest of the gradients which a Roman road
effected in crossing a ravine or breasting an
abrupt hillside ; for though wheeled traffic
declined and was largely replaced by water-
carriage for heavy material, and though inland
communication was largely replaced by pack-
horses and voyaging upon foot, many great
loads still depended upon wheels. When
the chariot was forgotten and all postal
service had ceased, a heavy load (especially
as the surface of the * direct road began to
degrade) would tend to descend and ascend
by gentler gradients, longer than and diver-
gent from the old straight line. The new
track would go round the base of a steep hill
or curve in a deep " U " to negotiate a valley.
Perhaps the best out of numerous examples
is that of the Radstock Valley, on the Fosse
Way.

172 THE STANE STREET

Next, when the first divergences at steep
gradients were established, the gradual decay
of the road surface would produce another
type. Society from the fifth century grew
ill-content to maintain the energy and, above
all, to pay the taxes which the high civilisa-
tion of Rome involved. It was not content,
therefore, to keep up the great Imperial
ways, and their progressive degradation pro-
duced a second set of divergences.

The form such divergences took was the
leaving of the strict line of the way and the
following of it to one side, to the right or
to the left. When the good surface on the
summit of the raised ridge was broken up,
travel along that ridge ran the risk of
accident. Wheeled vehicles might topple
from the bank, and it was safer to follow
along the level at its foot. Of this there are
innumerable examples all over England and
the Continent, where we see a modern lane or
road still following closely the line of a
Roman road, but, instead of being absolutely
identical with it, having the ridge of that
road running upon one side or the other in
the shape of a bank often surmounted by a
hedge and used as a boundary.

THE MODERN DIVERGENCES 173

But this would only occur where the local
soil was fairly hard and dry. Elsewhere
traffic would tend more and more to pick out
for itself the most convenient* natural course,
from dry patch to dry patch, in a circuitous
abandonment of the road, which it would re-
join again wherever its next section of main-
tained pavement began, the degraded
sections thus forming a chord to the arc of
divergence which would tend to disappear
under the plough in cultivated countries.

It is evident that examples of such diver-
gence would be more numerous on a clay soil
like that of the Sussex Weald than, say, on
a dry and hard soil such as chalk or sand.

Such was the second form of divergence
consequent upon the decline of the Imperial
power to gather taxes and to maintain its
military roads.

There was a third form.

This last form of divergence was due to
absolute breaks in the continuity of the road.
These breaks would most probably occur at
the passage of rivers or marshes, and their
effect was to make each section of the road
thus isolated lead nowhere, and in the neigh-
bourhood of such points a road already

174 THE STANE STREET

divergent would lead right away from the
line of the Roman road and seek a passage
by some distant point. We have a good
example of this on the Stane Street in the
Horsham Road leading off from Five Oaks
Green. When the bridge at Alfoldean was
broken, the section between Five Oaks Green
and the Arun led only to small and isolated
steadings and farms. The branch road lead-
ing to so considerable an agglomeration as
Horsham became far more important at the
expense of the old Roman way.

With this cause is intimately associated
the cessation of all necessity for general and
rapid communication from one distant point
to another, which of course accompanied the
decline of material civilisation and the loss
of power on the part of the central Govern-
ment. The continual travel — military, ecclesi-
astical and civil — which the first four centuries
demanded between two such points as Chi-
chester and London, the continual passage
to and fro of officials and of troops from
distant town to distant town, disappeared
with the disappearance of the organised
Imperial power. Society sank into a number
of self-contained and self-sufficient country-

THE MODERN DIVERGENCES 175

sides. To get from the chief market of these
to the various villages was a necessity ; but
only along the very largest arteries of
European travel (such as the Watling Street)
was it still necessary, after the breakdown of
the central Government, to proceed con-
tinuously and in large numbers from, say,
London to a port, or from one bishopric to
the next.

Again, a place upon a Roman road occasion-
ally (though rarely) declined in relative im-
portance, or even disappeared in the course of
the Dark Ages ; and off the line of the road
(though that was still less frequent) what had
been a village with the Romans might grow
into a town. When this form of desuetude
occurred, divergence would take the shape of
an " elbow " or " V," the later road leaving
the Roman road in order to visit the new
centre of habitation, and the old Roman road
along the base of the " V " falling into ruin.1

Of this form of divergence there is no ex-
ample upon the Stane Street, but a cognate

1 There are several examples of this in Northern Gaul
and in Britain, of which, perhaps, the most striking is that
of Castre a few miles south-west of Brussels, where the
" elbow " or " V " was actually formed before the repairing of
the Roman roads was abandoned.

176 THE STANE STREET

form is very common, which is the linking-
up of a line of villages somewhat off the
road, which villages were insignificant in
Imperial times compared with the great traffic
of an Imperial artery, but communication
between which in the Dark Ages was more
important than the use of an Imperial high-
way. That Imperial highway was no longer of
general service because the two distant points
which it connected were no longer in admini-
strative touch one with the other : a loop
line going up villages just off the Eoman road
took its place.

The last cause of divergence was encroach-
ment. No private man, however locally
powerful, could interfere with public necessity
so long as the Roman order remained intact.
When it collapsed, men locally powerful
began in every form to annex what had been
of public right, and, in sparsely inhabited
districts it needed no great wealth or influence
to do this. Even an isolated farm might, for
its convenience, divert traffic off some portion
of a road which its owner had seen fit to
enclose.

With these main causes in mind, we may
examine the divergences developed from the

THE MODERN DIVERGENCES 177

line of the Stane Street, beginning at the
Chichester end.

To take them in order : —

First we have the "elbow" at Westhamp-
nett. The cause of this I have found it
impossible to discover, but its shape suggests
encroachment.

Next we have the post-Roman road aban-
doning the Roman line at the foot of Hal-
nacker Hill and rejoining it a mile further on.
The cause of this divergence is self-evident
from a glance at the contours, and especially
clear upon an examination of the spot. Hal-
nacker Hill is abrupt and steep, with simple
parallel contours. To go over the shoulder
of it was part of the scheme of a military
road engineered upon straight lines. But the
moment the surface of the road fell into
decay, heavy wheeled traffic would of neces-
sity have followed round the base of the hill.
It involved less than 300 yards of divergence
from the straight line — to which local traffic
was naturally indifferent — and about 150 of
extra total distance. Exactly the same
factor was present in the crossing of that
eminence known as Long Down, and it was
natural that as the surface of the old road grew

M

178 THE STANE STREET

more and more difficult, the new one should
tend to follow the easier contours along the
side of the slope. But here the first serious
loss of the Stane Street as a continuous mode
of travel appears. Of the next mile and a
half, one full mile is overgrown with the
great Nore Wood.1 The London road drifts
further and further away from the dead-
straight of the Roman line, makes for the
valley of Upwaltham, and down Duncton Hill
to Petworth.

Why was this? Why was the road aban-
doned at this point ?

The answer to this question is to be dis-
covered in the nature of the use to which
the Roman road was put when the central
Government of Britain failed. Its use, as
I have said, became a local one. With every
decade the clay Weald, always sparsely in-
habited (and sparsely inhabited to this day),
ill-watered, tending to continual rough over-
growth, and, though fertile, arable only under
conditions of a fairly developed civilisation,
formed, not indeed a barrier, but a belt of land
more and more neglected, through which there
was no temptation for the Northerner to

1 Miscalled upon the Ordnance Map, the " North Wood."

THE MODERN DIVERGENCES 179

r~-sra Stttlie Street in use as a
metalled road

.-.__ Stane Street as a track only

:r^ Divergences of the modern road

Contours at 100ft.

,, „ 25 ft.

TOO

SCALE OF MILES

1 1

FIG. 15.

180 THE STANE STREET

travel south, or for the inhabitants of the
southern coast to seek the Thames valley.
The business of Chichester in the Dark Ages
was to seek Petworth or to seek Arundel.
The Stane Street, rising right over the
Downs, led nowhere ; it led to no market
which the cultivators of the sea- plain need
seek, nor to any seat of government with
which they were concerned. Arundel (a for-
tress of the Dark Ages, a place with some
vestiges of Roman material in its neighbour-
hood, an obvious crossing of the river, a
traditional port, and therefore presumably
Roman) lay quite off this track, and there
must in any case have been a road to it
through so fertile a district.1 To reach Pet-
worth the obvious track for droves and men
was to follow the great funnel made by Up-
waltham Combe, across the low pass above
Lavington, and then to pick one's way down,
sidling across the escarpment of the Downs
by Duncton Hill.

The Roman road was indeed locally used
and still is, from Gumber over the Downs to
the parish of Bignor, but this use formed no

1 Moreover, the discoveries of graves at Westergate and
Avisford confirm our common sense in the matter.

THE MODERN DIVERGENCES 181

part of any general travel : it was purely
parochial.

I have said that between Bignor and
the bridge at Pulborough— that is, between
the foot of the Downs and the first crossing
of the Arun — the Stane Street is altogether
abandoned by post-Roman lanes ; but I have
further said that an examination of the map
and a knowledge of the locality tells one that
it was abandoned naturally and gradually,
and not simply forgotten.

The road ceases to correspond with any
modern lane just where it enters Grevatt's
Wood. There is a point not quite half a mile
further on, where it again corresponds with
the modern road.

Why did the lane make the detour it does
to the right to get around to this point 1

Because in the field just to the east of
Grevatt's Wood (and on a spot just above
the 100-foot contour there) breaks out one of
those springs which mark the junction of
the chalk and the clay. This spring runs
down northward to the mill brook below,
and renders all that part of the field between
it and the further field upon the brook side
marshy. This difficulty was overcome by the

182

THE STANE STREET

building of a culvert in Roman times, which
kept the line of the way drained. But
when the road was no longer kept up and

Pulborougrh

_ — — Stane Street Traceable only.

mmiaf Stane Street Apparent.

ffVrrjrnf Modern Road.

SCALE OF MILES
1 2

FIG. 16.

the culvert became choked, the line of the
highway did but add to the difficulties of
of the place. The downward flow of the
water upon this northern slope was checked
by the ridge of the Stane Street and the

THE MODERN DIVERGENCES 183

swamp rendered worse than ever. The local
lanes therefore picked their way round to
the right over drier ground, and that drier
ground only touched the line of the Stane
Street again upon the further side of the
brook where the rising bank afforded good
drainage.

From this point the modern road to Pul-
borough will be seen following a course more
or less parallel to the Stane Street; but
never exactly corresponding to it. Save
where it actually converges with the Stane
Street at Pulborough Bridge, its nearest
point is at the bend of the road at Hardham,
where it is more than 140 yards away from
it. Its furthest point of divergence is just
beyond the Congregational Chapel of Waters-
field, where the bend in the road is exactly
480 yards from the line of the Stane Street.

In all this piece between Grevatt's Wood
and the Marsh and Pulborough there would
not, on a first glance at the map alone, appear
a reason for the gradual divergence of travel
from the Stane Street. But this is due to
the fact that the English Ordnance does not
give contours sufficiently close to show the
complexity of this piece of land. It is all a

184 THE STANE STREET

tumble of small, isolated, steep knolls which
can best be negotiated, if one has not a
properly engineered road to help one, by
following the track now actually followed by
the highroad ; that is, by curving round
southward so as to miss the high land of the
Ridge Farm and to cross the 100-foot contour
above Watersfield. After that one can only
avoid the sharp rock of Lodgehill by taking
one's way to the south of it, and one misses
the steep and difficult ridge of Ashurst by
passing down to the south and east by
Coldwaltham. Moreover, in the gradual
decay of good communications, the river here,
as throughout Northern and Western Europe,
took the place of the road, and these two
villages, Watersfield and Coldwaltham, pro-
bably much older than the Roman occupation,
but at any rate natural sites for habitation,
with good water, upon a dry soil, and to the
sunward side of the little hills, would be
dependent for such communications as they
needed upon the Arun river, which flows
beyond their water meadows from a quarter
to half a mile away.

When local travel superseded national,
it can easily be understood how the track

THE MODERN DIVERGENCES 185

leading naturally to one of these ancient
villages and then pursuing the southern side
of the slope to the next, would supersede
an Imperial road which neglected them both.
At Hardham, however, there was no geo-
graphical reason why the road should not
have converged upon the old Roman way.
Its line is tending to do so when, at the
point I have mentioned above where it is
not more than 140 yards distant, it veers
off to the right. This divergence can hardly
be due to the presence of Hardham Priory.
The priory, as I have said, is an example
of those numerous early foundations which
sprang up everywhere along the line of
the Roman roads. The actual site chosen
for the main building lay upon the river
side of the Roman camp and hard way. Such
a site put the monks on the dry side of the
small hill which stands here, and gave the
community easy access to water-carriage and
to the pastures. One would therefore expect
the track most commonly followed after the
building of the priory to veer towards it,
and not to converge until later with the
Stane Street. But though this accounts for
the track taken by the modern road to the

186 THE STANE STREET

point where it is nearest the Stane Street
(about 300 yards west of Hardham church),
the only explanation of its sheering off again
to reach Pulborough Bridge by the modern
causeway and its abandonment of the old
Koman made way across the marsh to the
Arun, lies in the gradual disappearance of
the made way.

Throughout England, with very few ex-
ceptions, wherever a Koman road crosses
marshy ground on approaching the passage
of a river, its line is lost : the weight of its
structure has gradually sunk into the soft
soil, and in the absence of repairs it has
at last been engulfed. In such cases the
post-Roman road picks its way as the track
of animals or local experience may direct
it, along whatever line of the marsh furnishes
it with the driest going.1 In such cases the

1 Examples of this may be found at Stratton on the
upper waters of the Cole near Swindon, at Cricklade, at
Newbury (where the Cirencester-Silchester road negotiates
the Kennet), at the crossing of the Blackwater some miles
east of Silchester, at Porton on the Bourne east of Old Sarum,
and at Avon Bridge west of it, at Bransbury Common
(where the Winchester-Cirencester road crosses the Test
river), at Romford and again at Mountnessing on the
Great Eastern Road from London to Colchester, at Bidford
on the Warwickshire Avon, at Water Stratford on the

THE MODERN DIVERGENCES 187

post-Roman track very often recovers the
line of the old pre-Roman track across the
valley, and the modern road not infrequently
is to be found following straight upon the
old engineered line of the Empire until it
strikes the soft ground, crossing this soft
ground and the stream by a winding path,
and upon the further side when dry ground
is again recovered, recovering its identity
with the Roman way.

In this question of the Pulborough marsh,
the observer must not be deceived by the
line of the present causeway : that of course
is modern and has been engineered under the
conditions of a civilisation as high as that
of the Romans. We must imagine that the
Roman causeway, starting rather less than
200 yards to the east of the modern road,
and making for Pulborough Bridge, was
gradually lost ; sinking here and there into
the softer places, less and less frequently
repaired, forming at first a few patches of
isolated hardway which later became useless
as the marsh gained upon them, and at last

Bedfordshire Ouse, &c. &c.— these are but a few out of
many examples. On the other hand, both Fenny Stratford
and Stony Stratford are notable exceptions to the rule.

188 THE STANE STREET

wholly disappearing beneath the soft soil
and under the recurrent floods of the river.

Meanwhile from the plateau upon which
Hardham Priory stood, to the southern end
of Pulborough Bridge, a track picking its way
from one harder patch of the marsh to an-
other, rudely metalled in the worst of the
intervening stretches, used perhaps only or
chiefly in the drier months, superseded the
older means of communication, which, as they
fell into ruin, the men of the Dark and early
Middle Ages had not the skill to repair upon
that considerable scale which would alone
be of service for the preservation of such a
monument.

All the next 12 miles of road from Pul-
borough Bridge to the second crossing of
the Arun beyond Alfoldean Bridge or Roman's
Corner, is a good modern road, metalled ;
and it has always been in continuous use
even before the northern part of it was
hardened.

This part of the road from Pulborough to
Alfoldean Bridge has suffered no appreciable
divergence in all the centuries of its existence
save very slight ones, which can only have
proceeded from the encroachments of private

THE MODERN DIVERGENCES 189

properties, and these, as might be expected,
are nowhere conspicuous save at and round
Billingshurst, a centre of continuous habita-
tion.

This section of the road was only used for
communication between Pulborough and the
villages to the north of it. As far as Five
Oaks Green, it was and is the regular Horsham
road. Beyond Five Oaks Green it was still
useful for serving Slinfold and the agricultural
district around it. Beyond Slinfold it sur-
vived as a green lane up to Alfoldean Bridge
without divergence.

It must of course be premised, in con-
nection with this section, that the dead
straight line which the original Roman way
presented, though clearly apparent upon a
map, is not equally apparent during the course
of travel along the modern turnpike.

The modern turnpike has slight sinuosities
in any such stretch of a Roman road which
it follows, and these are exaggerated to the
eye as one looks along the length of it at
any point. They are not, properly speaking,
divergences at all. They are but consequences
of two combined causes which slightly affected
the course along which metalling was laid

190 THE STANE STREET

down when the modern turnpikes were made.
These two causes are as follows : —

First, it was customary throughout Eng-
land to leave a wide space upon either side
of any old Roman way, in order to provide
alternative tracks for the heavy wagons which
cut up the soil in wet weather, and especially
upon clay. When the left-hand side of such
a belt had been turned into a morass by too
frequent passage over it, it was given a rest
and traffic went to the right. One can see
the process going on now in any one of the
broad green lanes remaining to us.

Secondly, a Roman road being, as a rule,
raised above the surrounding country by a
few feet, it was, as we have seen, exceedingly
inconvenient to travel along it, wherever its
surface had fallen out of repair. Traffic,
therefore, would take to the belt upon either
side of such a break, and this accounts for the
fact already mentioned that along all the
Roman roads of Britain and Gaul the actual
narrow line of the original way is often found
skirting the modern road just to the right
or to the left of it.

These two causes combined established
in any one summer a track more used than

THE MODERN DIVERGENCES 191

the rest in the broad belt, which track could
not always be upon the dead straight, and
when metalling was undertaken in modern
times, when many of the roadside spaces were
simultaneously enclosed, the hard surface
would follow a narrow strip corresponding to
the most used and beaten part of that belt.

At the point called Roman's Gate, about
100 yards north of the river-crossing at
Alfoldean Bridge, the hard metalled road
stops abruptly where it falls into the main
road from Horsham to Godalming, but it
cannot be said that post-Roman lanes and
tracks here neglect the Stane Street or are
any evidence of its abrupt abandonment.
There is here no true " divergence." There
is rather, as we saw between Halnacker and
Bignor at the crossing of the South Downs,
that rare thing, a breach in the use of a
Roman road.

We are approaching the wildest part of the
Weald : there were no villages or any con-
siderable steadings from one to the other of
which roads should lead : nothing but a few
rough paths through the undergrowth and
over the clay, and, short of constant travel
between the Thames valley and the sea-coast

192 THE STANE STREET

(which had of course ceased), we cannot in
this portion of the road expect the use of it
as a great highway.

It was evidently used, however, as much
as any other local tracks for proceeding from
one solitary farm to another. It is marked
as a road in the maps of the early eighteenth
century well beyond Roman's Gate — though
not quite to Ockley — but the lanes in this
neighbourhood have not sprung from the old
highway. They have arisen independently
of it.

Beyond the Chequer's Inn at Rowhook it
crosses one after the other two steep gills1
— White's Gill and Honeylane Gill. Another
track, therefore, runs parallel to it, on the
west and close by, to avoid these ravines.
Until quite lately neither this nor any other
neighbouring track was used as a hard road,
and the Stane Street, in continuous local use,
was no more abandoned than any other petty
local way. It proceeds, always in some use,
beyond the county boundary (which corre-
sponds of course with the very depth of this
deserted and lonely belt), has been recently
hardened to form an approach to Ruckman's

1 Or "ghylls," which is Sussex for a ravine and its stream.

THE MODERN DIVERGENCES 193

Farm (just upon the Surrey side of the Shire
mark), and so runs hardened for about a

Halehouse F,

Oakwood Hill Smith

Ockley

[Arun
•^Atfoldean Camp

Case of true Divergence at Oakjuood.
Modern Lanes Independent
of the Stane Street.

The Stane St. as a Modern Highway.
___ The Stane St.as a Track.

The Zig Zag at Holden Brook.

SCALE OF MILES

FIG. 17.

quarter of a mile until it strikes the local
lane running from Oakwood Hill eastward

194 THE STANE STREET

to the main Ockley road. At this point there
is true local divergence amounting to less
than half a mile. The Stane Street is aban-
doned by the later track which runs west-
ward round by Oakwood Hill Smithy, crosses
the Holden Brook by a bridge just south of
Halehouse Farm, and does not rejoin the
Stane Street for another 400 yards.

The cause of this local divergence is clearly
apparent as one follows the old straight line
of the Roman road. This line, as it approaches
Holden Brook, comes to a steep bank, now
wooded, down which the approach to the
stream is difficult. Here, as in the other
similar cases we have noted, the tendency of
travel when once the good surface of the road
had degraded, would be to seek some easier
slope for the wheeled traffic by which it might
cross from bank to bank, and such a slope is
afforded by the post-Roman lane with its
crossing below Halehouse Farm. From where
this lane falls in to the line of the Stane
Street at a point precisely 300 yards east by
a trifle north of Halehouse Farm, right on to
Buckinghill Farm on the far side of Ockley,
tme road has been and is in continuous use.

From that point, or rather from the gate

THE MODERN DIVERGENCES 195

leading up to Buckinghill Farm, where the
modern lane makes an abrupt turning to the
east to leave the Stane Street, we have a long
stretch of 3J- miles, throughout the whole of
which the modern road from Ockley to London,
soon merging with the modern road from the
Weald through Dorking to London, diverges
right away to the east and is distant at its
furthest point (which is the smithy at Beare
Green) by a -full mile from the line of the
Stane Street. From this point it slowly
tends to rejoin the line of the Stane Street
again, though, as we shall see in a moment, it
does not actually do so.

What is the cause of this divergence of the
modern from the ancient road, the most con-
siderable divergence which we find in the
whole of its course ?

The cause is to be found in the great height
to which the Stane Street here rises. This is
that point in its course where it bends over
the shoulder of Leith Hill, and where, as I
have described upon a previous page, a
"sight" was taken from the height of the
South Downs. The point of flexion where
the direct drive of the road from Pulborough
north and east turns slightly westward, is on

196 THE STANE STREET

a level with the great camp of Anstiebury,
and half a mile to the east of that stronghold
the curve (which here as on the escarpment
of the South Downs gives to a locality within
the elbow the name of " Coldharbour ") is
situated on the field south of Anstie Grange
Farm where the Stane Street crosses a little
rill, and the highest point of its passage over
this shoulder of the green sand is found exactly
three-quarters of a mile further on, where it
passes through a narrow copse about 300 yards
west of Folly Farm. The road here only just
misses the height of 500 feet.

Now, there was no reason why travel, when
once the good surface of the engineered road
was impaired, should follow this high and
steep line. It was far easier to diverge round
the base of the hill, and this is what the post-
Roman road did, reaching at its highest point
(that is, abreast of the highest point of the
Stane Street) no greater height than 372 feet.1
From this point the post-Roman track makes
again to recover the line of the Stane Street,
and where it crosses the 300-foot contour 100
yards or so beyond Holmwood Smithy, comes

1 Just outside the property upon the south side of Holm-
wood known as Oakdale,

THE MODERN DIVERGENCES 197

400

Terminal point

on shoulder nea

Ansti'e Grange Fa

Buck ing hi 1 1
Farm

Stane Sir.eet as a highway

a » as a track
• The Divergent Roads on lower and easier
Contours at 100ft. slope*

25ft.

SCALE OF MILES
1

FIG. 18.

198 THE STANE STREET

so very near to doing so that we must imagine
the two to have converged in former times.
There is not 200 feet between them ; but just
at that point occurs a new divergence for the
purpose of crossing Bent's Brook, which I will
now describe.1

Instead of following the line of the Roman
road right across the valley from Holmwood
to Dorking, the modern road gradually
diverges to the east until, at the point called
Pot Kilns Cottages, where the post office is, it
is no less than 200 yards off the road.

This divergence has an obvious cause for
anyone who has picked his way across un-
made country. The cause is a little stream
of water known as Bent's Brook. It is a
very small obstacle in the eye of the modern
traveller upon good made roads ; but if he will
leave that artificial advantage and attempt
to cross the valley by the fields, he will soon
find why upon the breakdown of the surface
of the Stane Street the men of the Dark Ages
took this divergent line. The crossing of

1 All that part of the road which runs from Horsham
to Dorking was not hardened till 1755, when it was made
by Act of Parliament (28 Geo. II. cap. 45), but a track was
there.

THE MODERN DIVERGENCES 199

SCALE OF1 MILE

Passage of the

STANE STREET through DORKING GAP.
LEGEND.

¥.. Old part of Town of Dorking.
' Modern Road from Weald to London.
Existing Roman Road.
_ _ — Alignment of Roman Road to Burford Bridge.
=- ^"_-_— Conjectural line of same.

,-_ — . , Contours of 100 feet.

^—^^~~-~, Intermediate Contours of 25 feet.

200 THE STANE STREET

Bent's Brook 200 yards down from the line
of the Stane Street was the only place where
a patch of hard land occurred upon its clayey
banks. The later track might indeed have
avoided the Bent's Brook altogether by going
to the west above its source, but if it had
done this (passing behind Holmwood Farm),
it would have had to climb, and travel
naturally preferred not to do that.

Just beyond the sandpit at the entry into
Dorking, and at the rise known as Flint Hill,
this divergent track rejoins the Stane Street
and uses the cutting which that old way
made through the sandstone here, coinciding
with the Eoman road for the next 600 yards,
past the road leading up to Tower Hill.
Then there is another divergence, this time
to the east : the line of the Stane Street
running straight in front of the Workhouse
and making for the end of the High Street,
where the West Street falls in. This line
involved a sharp switchback up and down
over the tumbled land at the foot of Eose
Hill; the modern road slightly diverges in
order to avoid the gradients.

From that point at the end of the High
Street (where the three main streets of Dork-

THE MODERN DIVERGENCES 201

ing meet) to Burford Bridge, is a distance of
1 mile and rather more than 5 furlongs.
Though the Stane Street is lost under this
stretch of arable land, we may presume it,
from arguments adduced in another section
of this book, to have gone straight, whereas
the modern road diverges considerably to the
east, being at its furthest point from the
Stane Street, where it crosses the Pipp Brook,
a divergence of 400 yards. From that point
it gradually reapproaches the Stane Street,
which it meets again opposite the Lodge of
Burford Lodge, where the road comes in from
Box Hill Station.

The cause of divergence here is as clear as
in the other cases. It was caused by the
seeking out of the best crossing of a water
obstacle when the artificial crossing upon the
straight line of the Stane Street has broken
down. The modern road crosses the Pipp
Brook just where its bank is hardest. The
Stane Street had crossed it upon a flat where
it is most marshy. This divergence had the
further advantage of avoiding the spur of
land A B which stands above the modern road
to the west opposite the Brighton and South
Coast Station.

202 THE STANE STREET

From the crossing at Burford Bridge to
the crossing of the Wandle, the divergence of
the road is conspicuous and the loss of it in
the northern part of this section remarkable ;
it is a true divergence none the less, and the
loss, though not explicable, is paralleled by
many instances of the same sort throughout
Europe. The modern road as far as Juniper
Hall does not exactly correspond with the
Roman way, but everywhere closely follows it,
and is only not identical with it, because (1)
the present bridge was built a few yards east
of the old crossing, and (2) the saving of a
very steep gradient, especially by the artifice
of cutting, necessitated this slight difference.

But from Juniper Hall northwards the
reason of the divergence was different. It
was due to the fact that the straight line of
the road up over Leatherhead Downs had no
object but the original military object of
reaching London in the most immediate
fashion.

Now, when that military object ceased, men's
slower and more local travel was concerned
with linking up the string of human habita-
tions near, but not on the road ; and this
string of human habitations lay near but not

THE MODERN DIVERGENCES 203

on the road for the simple reason that the
road, passing as it did over the high chalk
uplands, lacked water. Therefore, whatever
original tracks took a man from Burford
Bridge to Leatherhead, from Leatherhead
to Ashtead, Ashtead to Epsom, Epsom to
Ewell, and so forth, would become the only
continuous stream of traffic in the Dark Ages.
There was no need to seek the line of the
road again until the crossing of the Wandle
had to be negotiated, and there, so near
London upon what had continuously been the
royal villa, the communication across the
stream was kept up and used.

In these many miles of divergence the
Stane Street is nowhere between Juniper
Hall and the Wandle marshes identical with
the modern road. Of its appearance upon
the high chalk-land, and of its loss upon the
northern slope, I shall speak later.

The last case is the most interesting and
the most baffling. Take the crossing of the
Wandle, and lay a straight line from that
point to the southern end of the Roman
bridge at London, and what you get is
this : a close correspondence between that
line and Tooting High Street; but between

204 THE STANE STREET

the crossing of the Wandle and Tooting
High Street there is a divergence, though
a very slight one, to the left or west. To
what that divergence is due, neither local
history nor local surface condition have
informed me. I have found it similarly
impossible to discover why there is another
long divergence (again to the left or west),
taking the road over Clapham Common,
nor why it should not join the alignment
again until the point marked by St. John's
Church in Stockwell, just north of Clapham
Station. Perhaps the explanation is, that
the land just south-east of Clapham Common
was damp — it is still a Thalweg marked by
ponds — and necessitated a causeway which
has been swallowed up, but this upon soil so
continuously turned by building is pure
conjecture.

At any rate, from St. John's Church, just
before Mayflower Road comes into the
Clapham Road on the south-east, the old
Roman alignment is recovered and maintained,
heading straight for the south of old London
Bridge to a yard until Kennington Lane
comes in. To the north of this all the way
to the river there is divergence. The name

THE MODERN DIVERGENCES 205

Alignment fr.om Merton Bridge
to old London Bridge and
Conjectural Line of Stane St.
—>— ___ Old London Bridge, (Site of}

main road from
Merton to new London Bridge.
Nvui iondon Br.idge,

SCALE OF MILES

J L

FIG. 19,

206 THE STAKE STREET

Newington Causeway is significant. The
existence of the Causeway from which the
present Newington Causeway takes its name
is on record, but its exact passage is, I think,
lost ; and though, in discussing this section
later, I shall point out the evidence for the
road following a straight line right on to the
south end of London Bridge, the modern
streets undoubtedly deflect from it.

With this brief survey of what is, histori-
cally, the most interesting feature of the road,
I must content myself.

A minute examination of the modern, as
contrasted with the Roman road scheme,
between Chichester and London by the line
of Dorking and Pulborough— a personal ex-
perience repeated in a score of expeditions
covering more than once the whole line of
the Stane Street — has convinced me of a con-
nection here between Roman and mediaeval
travel which does but support all other evi-
dence available to a common knowledge of
Europe and its history. Britain in this one
instance, as in every other, proves no excep-
tion to the great story which links all
Christendom with its Roman foundation.

In particular, it has been the purpose of this

THE MODERN DIVERGENCES 207

section to show — and I hope it has success-
fully shown — that the divergences of the
local post-Roman ways from this, the most
direct of Roman roads, does not bear in any
place a character which might support the
theory of any sudden destruction of our
civilisation or any catastrophic abandonment
of the Roman highway. On the contrary,
they bear witness to the gradual and natural
substitution here and there of ways parallel
to it, proceeding from it and again converging
upon it, and in every case developed by slow
usage under the conditions of a declining
civilisation, by a usage always attached to
the Roman road as a guide ; while for far the
greater part of its trajectory we have seen the
Stane Street to have remained in continuous
though local use and suffering no divergence
at all.

PART III

DETAILS OF THE ROAD

[/ have not added maps to this last part
of my book because the details mentioned are
too numerous and close to be properly ex-
pressed on the scale necessitated by the size
of the volume ; for general features I must
refer my readers to the general map at the
end of the book and for particulars to the
l-inch and 6 -inch Ordnance. These are,
for the l-inch, sheets 270 (South London),
286 (Reigate), 302 (Horsham), 301 (Hasle-
mere), and 317 (Chichester) ; for the 6-inch,
Sussex, 2, 13, 23, 35, 36, 47, 49, 50, 62;
Surrey, 7, 12, 13, 25, 33, 34, 39, 40, 46, 47 ;
London, 3, 7, 8.]

PART III

DETAILS OF THE ROAD

A

FROM CHICHESTER TO HARDHAM CAMP

THE Roman town of Chichester, like nearly
all Roman towns in Britain and elsewhere
throughout the West, has maintained a con-
tinuous existence throughout the whole of
the Christian Era. It is, like most Roman
towns, of comparatively small area. Through-
out the West the Roman municipalities, so
far as we can trace them by the line of their
walls, were thus crowded into a small space,
and some little knowledge of the southern
towns upon whose model they were built,
with their narrow streets and packed houses,
will convince us that a small area is no proof
of a small population.1

1 The remains unearthed on the very rare abandoned
sites, such as Silchester, belong almost invariably to the

211

212 THE STANE STREET

Upon the analogy of Bordeaux and one
or two other places, which can be and have
been carefully studied, there would appear
to be some contrast between the extent of
a Roman town before and after the break-
down of the strict imperial organisation and
the line which divides a perfect civilisation
from the gradual decline into barbarism of
the Dark Ages. The later town seems to
have shrunk within walls which its suburbs
had exceeded in earlier times.

It is probable, though not certain, that
the walls surrounding British cities at least
date from this breaking-point between the
ordered Empire of the fourth century and the
welter of barbaric raids and local dissolution
at the end of the fifth. It may be, therefore,
that the walled limits which we can now
trace represent only smaller areas, the mini-
mum into which defence could be crowded ;
a perimeter reduced to its smallest extent
in order to increase the defensive power of
the garrison.

But in the case of Chichester, we have
reason to believe that the area now traceable

decline of society, and are poor evidence for the pressure of
population in earlier and more prosperous times.

CHICHESTER TO HARDHAM 213

corresponds to the original area of the town,
for the great military road to London sets
out at an angle from the east street of the
town precisely at the point where the wall
limited the town on this side.

The Stane Street starts, then, from what
was the Roman and mediaeval East Gate of
Chichester; it sets out at an angle 37 J° N.
of E., and pursues that direction without
a break (save a small exception, which will
presently be mentioned) for a distance of
8 miles and 3 furlongs — that is, to the summit
of the Downs at Gumber Corner.

We must note here, to repeat what has
been mentioned more than once in previous
pages, that the alignment so chosen was
far from being that of the direct line to
London, which direct line would strike
considerably to the northward. It is an
alignment drawn exactly towards the cross-
ing of the Arun at Pulborough Bridge, and
the reason which led the Roman engineers
to lay down this alignment for the first
section of their road was, as I have said
upon a previous page, the fact that it com-
bined the easiest crossing of the Downs with
a single passage over the water, avoiding

214 THE STAKE STREET

the double passage that would have been
necessary if the line had been deflected by
even a degree to the north, for that would
have involved the crossing of the Rother
as well as the Arun.

For the greater part of its first mile from
the East Gate of Chichester, the Roman
road remains in use to this day, and is
the main road out of the town, which later
bifurcates into the Arundel road to the
right and the London or Petworth road to
the left. But just before the completion of
the mile there appears the first anomaly.

At a distance of precisely 7 furlongs
from the East Gate of Chichester, and from
that point over a distance of half a mile
and 130 yards (935 yards), the Stane Street
is not followed by the modern road, and the
latter, without any marsh or river-crossing
or contours on this flat plain to account for
its divergence, makes an elbow to the north
of the direct line, the outer corner diverging
from that direct line by 200 yards.

Such " elbows " are common enough
throughout Western Europe, where any
considerable conglomeration of buildings has
given the right to private encroachments,

CHICHESTER TO HARDHAM 215

during the Dark and early Middle Ages, upon
these main roads. But they are rare in the
open country. There is no other example of
the same thing in the whole length of the
Stane Street save at this point ; and in the
analogous roads of Picardy and Normandy,
"elbows" of the sort are difficult to find.
Cases, indeed, are not uncommon where, a
town or village existing or having sprung
up a trifle over the road, the way to it and
back again to the road has, in the decay of
the Roman metal, become the highway and
formed an elbow in the straight line. We
have an example of this in that section of the
Roman roads of Britain which is most nearly
analogous to the Stane Street — to wit, the
Western Ermine Street, in its straight run
from Stratton past Cricklade, and through
Cirencester to Gloucester. Here, where the
road crosses the Thames at Cricklade, there
is good evidence that the crossing was once
in a direct line with the strict direction
of the road ; but the village of Cricklade
having gathered thickest somewhat off and to
the left of the Roman way, the later road haa
left the Roman one over a space comparable
to and rather longer than the exceptions we

216 THE STANE STREET

are dealing with at West Hampnett. But in
that case, as in nearly all others of the same
sort, the growth or removal of a human
settlement explains the divergence.1

In this case of Hampnett no such human
agglomeration will account for the divergence.
We must seek for it in the enclosure of some
local landlord, probably late in history, though
I have not been able to find the date of it.
The elbow as it now exists takes the road
along the river to the mill, and back from
that point to the main line, which it joins near
the church of West Hampnett.

From this point of West Hampnett Church
the modern road is coincident with the old
Roman one for 2 miles and 5 furlongs, which

1 The same phenomenon occurs half a mile from North
Beach on the Fosse Way, and again at La Madelaine, south of
Evreux, in Normandy. There is a striking case at Binche, in
the great north-eastern road of Hainault ; another at Crepy,
near Laon. Normandy, Brabant, Picardy, and Champagne
furnish between them perhaps a score. Another analogy
to this West Hampnett elbow is at Castre in Belgium,
at a distance of 9 miles north-east from Enghien upon the
great Roman road from Mons to the north. This deflection
is not made to serve a village of later growth, as the affix
"La Chausee" shows that the original road passed this
way. On the other hand, there is a village. At the West
Hampnett elbow there is no remaining proof of why
the divergence should have occurred.

CHICHESTER TO HARDHAM 217

form part of the London or Pet worth road
at this point.

In this stretch two points must be noticed
as incidental to the Stane Street. The first
is the characteristic name Strettington, the
place on the "street/* which is given to
certain fields and a farm immediately to the
left of the road ; the second is the situation
of the old priory of Boxgrove, a little further
on, standing five or six hundred yards off the
highway. The relation between the priory
of Boxgrove and the Roman road lies in the
fact that the priory was founded in the
generation of the Conquest within forty years
of the battle of Hastings — that is, in a time
which was still largely dependent for its com-
munications upon the great Roman highways.
Nor is this the earliest mention of the site,
for we have, in the Doomsday Survey itself,
record of a College of Clerks at this point,
and we are free to conjecture that a Saxon
ecclesiastical establishment of unknown anti-
quity stood at this spot.

Monastic establishments are, as we have
often remarked, perpetually to be found along
the line of the old Roman highways, especially
when those establishments are of ancient date,

218 THE STANE STREET

and when their foundation precedes the de-
velopment of the new roads which came with
the later twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
On this account the existence of such establish-
ments may not only be continually referred
to the line of a Roman highway, but occasion-
ally permit us to infer the passage of such a
highway when all visible traces of it have
been lost.

The Stane Street, after passing the site of
Boxgrove Priory, passes through Halnacker
Village until it reaches Warehead Farm.

All this way the road has been very gradu-
ally rising for the crossing of the Downs. On
leaving the East Gate of Chichester its surface
is a little over 30 feet above the sea ; it is
60 feet at West Hampnett Church, 70 feet by
Strettington ; crosses the 100-foot contour
abreast of Boxgrove, and by the time it reaches
Warehead Farm is over 180 feet above the
sea, having risen 150 feet in its first 4 miles ;
for the bifurcation at Warehead Farm is
precisely 4 English miles from the East Gate
of Chichester. From this point, the bifur-
cation at Warehead Farm, to a point just
under a mile further on called " Sea Beach,"
there is an interesting and characteristic de-

CHICHESTER TO HARDHAM 219

flection of the modern road from the original
line of the way.

We have seen that many of the principal
roads of England which appear to have arisen
independently of the old Roman system, and
only to use that system on occasion when it
happens to serve their direction, prove, upon
closer examination, to be the direct descendants
of the Roman ways, which ways have suffered
continual deflection from known causes, but
to which the modern road continually returns.
An especially interesting example of this I
have discussed, and shall again deal with, in
the neighbourhood of Dorking, upon this same
road.

The principal causes of such deflections we
saw to be steep hills, marshy land, and the
growth of densely inhabited areas, and private
interests which tended to encroach upon and
turn the original and direct alignment of the
Roman engineers.

This deflection of the modern road from
the Stane Street at Wareham Farm is an
example of the first case. The steep and
nearly isolated hill called Haln acker Hill,
with its windmill upon the summit, was not
too steep for the purposes of a Roman road,

220 THE STANE STREET

and that road goes right over the shoulder of the
hill, touching the 300-foot contour, and coming
down as steeply upon the other side without
leaving its alignment by a yard.

For marching and for the small two-wheeled
vehicles which were principally in use with
the Roman forces, upon a good surface steep
gradients of this kind were useful enough.
The disadvantage of their arduous climbs
and sharp descents was compensated by the
advantages of a simple and therefore cheap
plan of construction, a full view ahead to
lessen the danger of surprise, and the more
prompt and regular management of troops
that is always possible upon an unswerving
line.

But when the principal use of a highway
was for the passage of heavy farm vehicles,
or even of chance travel, men would naturally
tend to avoid these violent gradients and
to skirt round the base of the hill. A track
thus established would be more naturally
used by the heavy vehicles of agricultural
work, and particularly would it be fixed as
the regular road, with the increasing size and
weight of the vehicles in the transformation
of farming in and after the seventeenth

CHICHESTER TO HARDHAM 221

century. We shall find, therefore, that
almost universally throughout Britain and
Northern Gaul, where the old Eoman military
road takes a very steep gradient to cross in a
direct line a valley or a hill, some track,
formed doubtless in the Dark Ages and
metalled in modern times, avoids the steep-
ness of an old alignment at the expense
of a detour and of some increase in dis-
tance.1

The line of the old Roman road over Hal-
nacker Hill has survived in its entirety. The
first part is a clearly marked lane reaching
almost to the summit of the rise ; the second
part is marked by a line of hedge, and at the
foot of the decline joins the modern road at
a point 173 feet above the sea. Here, for a
quarter of a mile, the modern road and the
Roman road coincide. The name of this
piece and of the farm adjoining it is signifi-

1 There is a striking example of this at Waterstratford,
near Buckingham, where the Roman road from Bicester to
the Watling Street takes the valley sheer, while the
modern road goes round by Tingewick. Another very
striking British example is to be found upon the Fosse
Way, where it crosses the Cam Brook Valley, but it would
be tedious to enumerate many such cases ; they are to be
discovered in almost every place where a Roman road
deals with an abrupt valley or hill.

222 THE STANE STREET

cant. They are called " Sea Beach," and
from this it has been conjectured that the
metalling or foundation of the road, even
possibly as far as Ockley, was originally made
of stones brought up from Selsey and its
neighbourhood.1

At the end of this short section, and
at a distance of 5 miles and 1J fur-
long from the East Gate of Chichester, the
Roman way ceases to correspond with any
modern road, nor do we find it corresponding
again with a metalled highway until we come
to Pulborough Bridge, 9 miles further on.

On these 9 miles, the first half of which
are occupied by the Roman road's crossing of
the Downs, and the second half by its passage
through the broken country at their foot,
between their escarpment and the Arun, the
Stane Street appears to have fallen out of use
as a continuous means of communication,
from some period in the Dark Ages to
modern times, and this singular break in
the continuity of its use suggests the com-

1 Dallaway was of this opinion, but Martin (Sussex
ArchsRological Journal, 1859, pp. 127-146) described the
patch of gravel here as being a natural bed ; it is not
marked as such, however, on the new Geological Survey.

CHICHESTER TO HARDHAM 223

parative isolation during the Dark Ages of
the sea plain from the Weald.

The modern road goes off after Sea Beach
to the left and makes for Petworth. The
communication between Chichester and
London, therefore, became at some early date,
and remains to this day, divorced from the
old direct road taken by the Roman armies.
When the Stane Street becomes again a road
in continuous use at Pulborough, it is a modern
road unconnected with the approach to Chi-
chester, and connected only with that to
Arundel. Moreover, until quite modern
times even this piece north from Pulborough
was not used as the main road to London
from that place and from Arundel for many
miles. And even so, beyond Billingshurst it
leaves the line of the Roman road to pass by
Horsham, and only returns to it again in the
neighbourhood of Dorking.

When the system of British roads gradually
regrouped itself at the close of the Dark Ages,
it took the form which we still see continuing
in some parts, of linking up the tracks which
served one countryside with those that served
the next, until at last the continuous high-
way between any two great centres was over

224 THE STANE STREET

a tortuous line built up of such chance
sections. The great Roman ways lingered
everywhere, though with diminishing useful-
ness, throughout the West, some of them pre-
served in their entirety ; but where they
passed through desolate stretches, such as
that which the Stane Street passes in crossing
the Downs and later the height of clay upon
the Weald, their use must have grown rarer
and rarer, though even so they served for
communication upon particular occasions
where large bodies of men or widely spread
interests had to deal with great spaces of
travel. It is this last kind of use which ex-
plains to a late date the presence upon the
Roman roads of the monastic establishments
and the fact that until well into the Middle
Ages nearly all great battles take place in
the neighbourhood of a Roman road, which
has served as a line of march.

The Stane Street, then, after Sea Beach,
directs itself through an uninhabited belt of
chalk, which is the slope of the Downs, and
which rises throughout 31 miles to Gumber
Corner. It was a stretch denuded of men,
because water was not to be obtained in the
greater part of it, save at the expense of very

CHICHESTER TO HARDHAM 225

deep digging ; l while the lower part was
presumably covered by that great wood called
the Nore Wood, which to this day clothes all
this part of the Downs and prevents the
growth of villages.

From Sea Beach to the crossing of the
Ertham road and the entry of the Nore
Wood, the Stane Street goes over a sharp
rise of neglected grass and woodland. It is
traceable all the way, not as a track, but
as an irregular mound, sometimes marked
by a hedge. Just before reaching the Ertham
road its passage is confused by a tangled
undergrowth, but on the far side of that road,
and during its mile-long passage through the
Nore Wood, it forms a clear and unmis-
takable track, raised for the most part to
a height of several feet above the ground
about it.

I say " for the most part"; for the Stane
Street here begins to exhibit a characteristic
discoverable in all the old Roman roads of
the country, which is, that where it reaches
a patch of boggy or marshy land, no matter
how small in extent, it disappears. The

1 The well at Gumber Farm is between 300 and 400 feet
in depth.

P

226 THE STANE STREET

effect of time on such patches is gradually to
swallow up the foundations of a Roman way,
and the conspicuous ridge of the Stane Street
disappears thus in three or four places of a
few yards in extent during its passage through
the Nore Wood.

At its issue from this forest it has climbed
to nearly 400 feet above the sea, and its
remaining course to the summit (where it is
a few feet below the 700-foot contour) is for
the most part through broad fields, and,
in the last section of it, over the open Chalk
Downs.

Where it crosses the broad fields of Gumber
Farm, the Stane Street is no more than a
ridge supporting a long straight hedge divid-
ing these fields, but upon the chalk it reappears
again in a curious formation, which has given
rise to rather unprofitable discussion in archae-
ological journals.1 It is singularly clearly
defined and raised quite 4 feet above the
surrounding level, but it shows the relics of
some sort of construction passing down its
middle, raised for what purpose or in what
period it is impossible to discover or even to
guess. We only know that it exhibits this

1 See Sun, Arch., 1859, pp. 127-146,

Is

^

z *

H2

CHICHESTER TO HARDHAM 227

feature upon the height of the Chalk Hills
alone, and, having reached their summit, con-
tinues in its strict alignment for a few yards
down the further gentle slope, and, at the
shoulder where this becomes steep, takes its
great downward sweep along the escarpment
of Bignor Hill to the plain.

This summit where the Stane Street crosses
the saddle of the Downs is a very remarkable
point in the trajectory between Chichester
and London.

It affords a clean view of the space between
the Surrey hills and the sea. The spire of
Chichester forms a conspicuous landmark in
the plain to the south ; Pulborough, the
bridge of which is the goal of this section of
the road, is equally conspicuous somewhat
nearer, in the Vale of Arun to the north.
The shoulder of Leith Hill, the next point
after Pulborough to which the alignment of
the road directs itself, may be followed in its
detail in clear weather, so that any good
mark upon it— a couple of 50- foot poles, for
instance, with canvas stretched between —
would be clearly visible. What is more, the
gap in the Surrey hills whereby a road from
Pulborough should lead to London stands

228 THE STANE STREET

conspicuous when viewed from this height,
the local modern name of which is Gumber
Corner. It was undoubtedly the point from
which the general idea of the road was first
taken. Three great landmarks — one upon
the summit of the Surrey Downs, the second
on Leith Hill, the third erected here at
Gumber Corner — could be made the pivots for
the whole survey. From the first the crossing
of the Thames at London could be easily
marked upon the north ; from the second this
to the north and Gumber itself upon the
south, while from Gumber, Chichester and
the Channel upon the south lay spread out
beneath. Four views taken from three points
thus command the whole 57 miles.

Taken along this summit at Gumber, the
road still points exactly to the southern end
of Pulborough Bridge, but it is remarkable
that, save possibly in the last stage of the
mile before Pulborough (which, as we shall
see, is lost), the actual road does not corre-
spond to this ideal alignment.

There is here neither error nor doubt. A
Roman military road was plotted in great
straight sections. When the nature of the
ground permitted it to follow the ideal straight

CHICHESTER TO HARDHAM 229

line stretched and probably staked out be-
tween the termini of each section, it did so.
When the nature of the ground forbade it, it
was split up into shorter deflected straight
lines, sometimes joined by curves, but it re-
turned again to the plotted alignment as soon
as possible. The gap between the summit at
Gumber and the point where the Roman
road may have returned to its alignment at
Hardham Camp, is one of 4 miles and 7
furlongs. During the whole of this distance
the road lies off the straight line, first to
the right of it, as it curves down Bignor
Hill, then, crossing the ideal line at the foot
of the hill, to the left as far as the camp.

The reason that the Stane Street behaves
in this eccentric fashion over this gap of
nearly 5 miles, we have seen to be ill-
apparent upon a study of the map alone,
and that because the English Ordnance Map,
though easily the best in the world,1 has one

1 The complete English Survey, with its 1-in., 6-in., and
25-in. scales, its old and new geological appendix, and the
various forms in which it can be obtained, has no rival
in the cartography of Europe, and therefore of the world.
It is a point too little known in this country and well worthy
of remark. The German maps are, as one could expect, pains-
taking and thoroughly unsatisfactory ; the Swiss, though

230 THE STANE STREET

defect, which is that the contour lines are too
far apart. Even upon the 6-inch scale they
are 100 feet apart, save in the first 100 feet,
where they are 50 feet apart.

The result is, that many details of the
surface, essential to the understanding of
history or topography, must be visited upon
the spot, and that the writer upon those
subjects must establish contour lines of his
own between the 100-foot contours.1

The road first descends the flank or escarp-
ment of Bignor Hill in the broad curving
sweep to which I have already alluded. The

very detailed in sections, not as thorough as our own ; the
Italian upon too small a scale ; the Spanish, save for sections
around Madrid as a centre, and with difficulty obtainable,
non-existent; the Belgian, though excellent in plan
(especially the 1/40,000), not so well printed ; the French,
though numerous and varied, not the equal of ours even in
the 1/80,000 map. Sectional maps of particular districts
(such as the neighbourhood of Paris as the 1/20,000
coloured) are perhaps superior both in France and Switzer-
land to those of this country, but for a general survey
nothing approaches the English.

1 There is no reason why this grave defect should not be
remedied upon the 6-inch maps at least, and why contours
of 20 feet should not be introduced. They would be suffi-
ciently far apart even upon the steepest hillsides. The
Belgian 40,000, and the French garrison maps upon the same
scale (less than 1| to the inch), show contours at 10 metres
— that is, about 33 feet — and they are always perfectly plain.

CHICHESTER TO HARDHAM 231

combe below this curve bears the name of
Cold-Harbour, a name already discussed in a |
previous page, where we have seen that only
one other Cold-Harbour lay upon the Stane
Street, and that exactly in the elbow of a
similar flexion upon the shoulder of Leith
Hill. In this broad sweep the Stane Street
falls from the 700-foot contour to the 400,
where it runs just above the chalk-pit which
marks the foot of Bignor Hill, and at which
a modern lane leaves the Eoman road to
join the valley road below. Up to this point
the Stane Street, curving down the flank of
the hill, has remained in a sort of use ; an
occasional cart will go up it on the rare
occasions when there is any need for such
a vehicle to reach the summit of the Downs,
but it is not metalled or preserved in any
way. It only forms a rough platform of
chalk such as is always produced by traffic,
and even by the passage of animals over the
steep escarpments of that geological formation.
After the point upon the 400-foot contour,
just above the chalk-pit, where the modern
lane diverges, the Stane Street has fallen
quite out of use. It falls to the 200-foot
contour, which is the base of the Downs, in

232 THE STANE STREET

the next quarter of a mile, goes through a
thicket called Bignor Tail Wood, and thence
forward disappears as a track altogether until
Pulborough is reached, a distance of nearly
5 miles.

But though it is lost as a track in human
use, its passage can both be inferred and
actually proved during the greater part of
the way. It ran north-east from the end of
Bignor Tail Wood to the footpath which is
here parallel to the road at the foot of the
Downs.

In the field beyond this footpath it makes
a bend still further northward, and crosses
the road at the foot of the Downs (that is,
the road between Bignor and Westburton) at
a point not 50 yards west of the lane by
which Hadworth Farm is reached from this
road, and it makes straight for a point a
third of a mile farther on, where this lane
comes up against another lane in a UT"
100 yards west of the south-west corner of
Grevatt's Wood. Though quite lost as a track
through these fields, the farmers can clearly
recognise its direction by the different colour
the soil still retains, especially in the first
ploughing.

CHICHESTER TO HARDHAM 233

To this section belongs the very remark-
able monument known as the Roman Villa
or Pavement of Bignor.

Six hundred yards away to the west of
the road there stood, upon one of the most
solemnly beautiful sites of South England,
covering a general southern slope that looks
right at the dark wall of the Downs above
it, a great Roman mansion. Of the purpose
it served, whether it was the house of a
functionary or of a great squire, we know
nothing. We have but the vaguest conjecture
upon which to determine its date. But that
so much should have been spared by so many
centuries is a sufficient proof of its importance.
Even of what remains, the extreme portions
upon the east and west are over 200 feet
apart, between the north and south more.
The materials, as we can still tell, were drawn
from every quarter, the stone of the pillars
was from Dorsetshire, part of the mosaic
materials perhaps from Italy. Even the
site of the Bath, which would most naturally
disappear and be filled up in the course of so
many generations, can be traced, and the
whole establishment is on the scale of a
palace, though, since the plan and pavements

234 THE STANE STREET

only remain, the eye has difficulty in appreci-
ating on the open field how great the build-
ing was.

At the point near the south-west corner
of Grevatt's Wood to which we have traced
it, the Stane Street turns again, this time
more to the east, and runs almost due
north-east down the sharp slope of that
copse from the 100- to the 50-foot contour,
and in the field into which it emerges on
leaving the wood presents very clear relics
of its passage.

It is worth noting that in such traces
of the road as farmers have discovered be-
tween Bignor Hill and Grevatt's Wood, red
gravel and red flint, that is, iron-stained
gravel and flints from Coldwaltham, occasion-
ally help to recover its trace, and this would
argue the metalling of this part of the road
southward fromPulborough with stone brought
from the Weald. It is but what we should
have expected, for it was more convenient
to bring such metal along the flat than to
depend upon the gravel or chalk-flint coming
from over the Downs.

This field has always been marshy. A
spring of water rises above it and drenches

CHICHESTER TO HARDHAM 235

all the land down to the brook below. There
is evidence that when the road was built
a culvert was made here for the passage
of the water, a culvert which was of wood,
at least when it was last repaired, with per-
haps a washing-place upon the further and
lower side. Of the causeway by which the
road must have passed the stream immedi-
ately below, there is no trace whatever left.
Here, as everywhere else in marshy land,
the road has sunk. But we know that it
must have crossed exactly at the fork of
the roads just beyond, because this point
is in a line both with the remains outside
Grevatt's Wood and the cutting, to which
allusion will be made in a moment.

It is worth noting that where the Stane
Street crosses this stream, it is at the lowest
point in its whole course, to wit, 26 feet
above the level of the sea.

It climbed then from this crossing of the
stream to the fork of the road just above,
and continued right over the hill, leaving
the village of Watersfield a quarter of a
mile to the left, and passing everywhere
through land either now or recently under
the plough. Not a trace of it is here visible

236 THE STANE STREET

to the eye. Here and there patches of it
show slightly after the first ploughing, but
our real guide to its alignment in this last
piece is the exact coincidence of the direction
of the last section visible outside Grevatt's
Wood, and a cutting which still remains con-
spicuous, and which I will now describe.

The beginning of this cutting is exactly
\\ mile and 400 feet from the last sign
of the road outside Grevatt's Wood. It is
to be found exactly 250 feet east of the house
and buildings called Ashurst, upon the road
from Coldwaltham to Petworth. Here a
ridge of sand stands boldly up upon the
summit of a roll of land, and through this
section the Roman engineers drove a dyke,
which stands almost as neatly cut to-day
as when they left it. Upon the far side of
the cutting the road is again lost.

This is unfortunate, for in the remaining
three-quarters of a mile between the cutting
and Hardham Camp the Stane Street must
somewhere have turned, and we are unable to
find its precise turning-point. The line from
Grevatt's Wood to the cutting, prolonged, would
lead us quite 600 feet to the west of the camp,
and, what is more, would take us away from

CHICHESTER TO HARDHAM 237

the direction of Pulborough Bridge altogether.
Moreover, the road is quite plainly visible
entering the camp by its south-western
gate, and this line in its turn, if prolonged,
would miss the cutting by something like
300 feet.

Perhaps the guess taken by the Ordnance
Map is the wisest, though it is no more than a
guess. What the Ordnance Map does to
establish the turning-point, is to take the axis
of the gate on the south-west of the camp,
to draw a line from the centre of the gate
perpendicular to its axis : this it regards as
the line on which the Stane Street entered
the camp. It next draws another line in the
prolongation of the cutting, and it fixes the
point of flexion in the road at the point where
these two ideal lines cut one another. Beyond
this guess there is nothing to be done, for all
trace of the road is here lost.

Hardham Camp itself is still very clearly
defined, though the relics of buildings which
seem to have remained until modern times
have now wholly disappeared. It was more
perfect before the little single-line railway
which goes from Pulborough to Chichester,
and serves Petworth, Midhurst, and Goodwood,

238 THE STANE STREET

was built, for this line has cut right through
the north-western part of the camp and
destroyed it. Enough remains, however, for
us to estimate what this first halting-stage
upon the great military way was in area and
purpose. The area enclosed was about 4
acres : less than 500 feet square. It afforded,
therefore, allowing for two principal cross-
ways within it, shelter for, say, 4000 un-
mounted men under canvas ; with proper
buildings, anything up to double that number.
Even upon that calculation the station, like
most English stations, is a small one. It
presupposes the going to and fro upon this
military road between London and the
Channel, not of armies, nor even of divisions,
but rather of a force which served the
purposes of a police.

Armies in great numbers must, of course,
have used these military ways upon occasion,
but a fortified area of such dimensions could
have been of no use to them as a stage upon
the march, save as a point where they would
find information, perhaps remounts, or, at any
rate, postal facilities and certain stores. We
must suppose that these military ways, when
they were used for great expeditions, such as

CHICHESTER TO HARDHAM 239

that of the usurper Constantine, or that of
Maximin, pitched camp in the open field.

Before leaving this section of the road, we
must note opposite Hardham Camp, and only
a quarter of a mile south-east of the road at this
point, the establishment of yet another re-
ligious house connected with the Stane Street,
Hardham Priory.

The establishment of Hardham Priory is lost
in antiquity. We cannot trace it indeed be-
yond the thirteenth century, but it was evi-
dently then long in existence, and, though a
place of no great importance (by the time of the
dissolution it had dwindled to a prior and two
canons), its site is significant. It stands, as
we saw Boxgrove to stand, just off the road
to the south-east of it, like Boxgrove, and at
just the same distance as Boxgrove.

Like Boxgrove it was connected with a
populous part of the country, within a mile
or two of a considerable centre, Chichester in
the one case, Pulborough in the other. Hard-
ham seems to have stood to that section of
the Stane Street which passed through the
lower Arun valley, much as Boxgrove stood
to that section of the Stane Street which
served the fertile sea plain. If its origin

240 THE STANE STREET

should ever be discovered, it will presumably
appear that it was established no later than
the twelfth century, in which the old road
system, though decayed and in places ruined,
was still the main system of communication
throughout Britain.

Hardham Priory has a further interest in
the archaeology of the Stane Street.

It was presumably the proximity of this
house which led to the removal of all traces
of building within and about the camp.

Such Roman building was the natural
quarry of the Dark Ages. The camp at
Alfoldean, as we shall later see, having no
habitation in the neigbourhood, was spared.
Hardham Camp has furnished little to
modern research save certain burnt remains
of what may have been wooden beams.

With this we close the first section of the
Stane Street. Its exact length from the
East Gate of Chichester to the south-west gate
of Hardham Camp, measured along its actual
trajectory upon the largest scale map, and
allowing for the conjectural point of flexion
just beyond the Ashurst cutting, is 13 miles
2030 feet.

B

FROM HARDHAM CAMP TO ALFOLDEAN
BRIDGE

If we were taking the Stane Street by its
great limbs instead of by its stations or mili-
tary halts, we should have had to make the
first section go as far as Pulborough Bridge,
for Pulborough Bridge is the end of the first
direct alignment. I have chosen, however,
as the reader knows, to take my sections by
the stations, and in this second section I deal
with the run from Hardham Camp to the
next camp, which is 12 miles further north,
at Alfoldean.

Starting from the southern, or rather south-
western gate of the camp, and measuring to
the south end of Pulborough Bridge, is pre-
cisely 1 mile and lj furlong.

During the whole of this distance the Stane
Street has entirely disappeared. We can,
however, both conjecture its path with
accuracy and explain why it is lost.

Q

242 THE STAKE STREET

We can conjecture the path it took with
accuracy, because the northern exit of the
camp is exactly upon the alignment which
was stretched by Roman engineers from the
East Gate of Chichester to the south end of
Pulborough Bridge. It is, therefore, virtu-
ally certain the causeway ran upon that line ;
and a causeway there must have been, because
nearly the whole of the intervening space is
marsh, the feature of which explains, as we
have seen, the disappearance of the road.1

The use of that common sense, without
which history cannot be written, should be
sufficient to convince anyone that Pulborough
Bridge, as we now have it, corresponds exactly
with the Eoman crossing of the river, for
coincidence could never account for the exact
termination at this point of an alignment
over 14 miles in length. We have, how-
ever, positive proof as well, for when the

1 There is one argument and one only for the conception
that the present causeway, or rather the last quarter of a
mile of it, corresponds to the Roman road, and that is that
the modern road takes the marsh at the narrowest point.
But the saving in length, compared with a straight line
from the camp to the bridge, is not 50 yards, and this
economy in the cost of construction would have been gained
at the expense of the military advantage obtained by a
straight bit of road commanding the passage of the river.

HARDHAM TO ALFOLDEAN 243

stone arch of the present Pulborough Bridge
was being set against its bank in the year
1829, in digging for the foundations of the
abutment, the end of the Roman cause-
way was discovered, metalled with gravel.1

The Stane Street then crossed the river
exactly where Pulborough Bridge now crosses
it. It must have climbed the hill by the line of
the present road, as the contours of that steep
nook will convince any observer upon the spot,
and, once at the top of the hill, it started
upon the second great limb of its trajectory.

Before we speak of the characteristics of
this second limb (in the midst of which the
second mansio or camp-station is to be found),
it should be noted that Pulborough is certainly
a place of very ancient human settlement,
its place-name meaning, presumably, "The
Town upon the Marsh " — a Celtic combination.
There were, as we know, substantial remains
of Roman buildings there until quite lately,
as historical time goes, but unfortunately

1 Before this bridge of 1829, and during the loss of
the Roman causeway in the Dark and Middle Ages, we
must presume that — as at Staines and in other analogous
instances — various bridges succeeded one another, for the
last bridge before this stone one was a wooden one, and not
absolutely identical in site.

244 THE STANE STREET

little has survived to our sceptical day. It
is therefore open to those (the more numerous
of modern scholars) who are for ever belittling
the Roman foundations of this country, to
say that we have no direct proof of the origin
of these monuments, which have now dis-
appeared. But Cartwright, in his history of
the Rape of Arundd, testifies to a curious
and perhaps religious point, that the stone
used in one of the largest of these bodies of
building was, in the opinion of experts of his
time, Italian.1

To return to the alignment of the Stane
Street : the first section, that leading from
the East Gate of Chichester to Pulboroueh

o

Bridge, was drawn upon an alignment of 3?i°
North of East in direction. From the top of
Pulborough Hill the Stane Street bends
sharply northward, and points in a direction
59° North of East and upwards. It bends,
that is, nearly 22° to the left or north.2

1 Cartwright, Rape of Arundel, p. 357. Four pigs of
Roman lead were also found in the vicinity. (Gentleman's
Magazine, 1824-5). Note further the local name "Home
Street," which is traditionally Holm Street, and the name
of " Borough Farm " on the same ridge.

8 It is remarkable that this alignment is taken, with a
back sight, towards the end of the bridge. In other words,

HARDHAM TO ALFOLDEAN 245

The Stane Street pursues this direction
of 59° North of East for a distance of exactly
3| miles, reckoning from the south end of
the bridge. Its absolutely straight line has
been marred by the necessity of crossing the
railway, and by slight sinuosities of 5 or
6 yards or so where it climbs Codmore
Hill, such sinuosities as would arise from
conditions of traffic on the rise during the
centuries in which the Roman way was left
with a broad neglected stretch of grass
at either side. From the top of the hill,
however, even these sinuosities disappear,
and the dead straight line is maintained to
the distance I have spoken of, 3| miles from
the South end of Pulborough Bridge. There,
just after crossing a little stream at the
south wall of the building called Todhurst
Farm, which stands upon the east of the road,
comes that curious flexion in the alignment
which has been discussed on pp. 96-97.

On its new course from Todhurst Farm
the Stane Street proceeds as a modern road

the Roman engineers did not plot out the Chichester to
Pulborough section, and then plot out another section from
the top of Pulborough Hill, but schemed for two straight
lines that should have one definite point where they crossed,
to wit, the southern end of the bridge.

246 THE STANE STREET

2J miles on, and there enters the village of
Billingshurst.

It is here to be remarked that the Roman
road, as is the case in nearly every place
where these military alignments pass through
places continuously inhabited after the break-
down of the Imperial government, has been
encroached upon to the right and to the left.
The modern traveller, looking along the Stane
Street from a point about a mile and a
quarter short of Billingshurst to a point half
a mile beyond the centre of that place, does
not see it as a straight road. It appears to
wind. The sinuosity is very slight, but the
least bending in a line, when one is looking
along it, is most noticeable, and in this section
an observer unacquainted with the origin
of the Stane Street might doubt its being
a Roman road at all.

When one has climbed the hill outside
Billingshurst. and as one approaches the
grounds of Summer's Place, the direct align-
ment is again recovered and is maintained
uninterruptedly to the branching off of the
Horsham road at Five Oaks, which is exactly
7 miles 1 furlong from the crossing of the
Arun.

HARDHAM TO ALFOLDEAN 247

It was probably at this point that the
Stane Street began to lose in the Dark Ages
the regular traffic which can alone maintain
the tradition and existence of a public way,
for it was at this point that the lack of any
necessity for going further northwards and
the presence of a local approach to the local
centre of Horsham led travel off the road
towards the east.

The antiquity of Horsham we have no
documents to determine ; but when Horsham
is first mentioned in the Middle Ages, it
already appears as an established town, and
the whole history of the place and of its
political connection is bound up, not with
the north, but with the Weald and the south-
ward traffic of the Weald. A way from
Horsham to Arundel and to Petworth and
to Pulborough there must have been in the
Dark Ages, but the High Weald north of
Horsham has little history and no continuous
traffic attached to it. It is upon that high
Weald that the Stane Street has degraded
most thoroughly, and so to-day a man who
has followed the Stane Street as a modern
road as far as Five Oaks must, if he would
continue a direct journey to London, take

248 THE STANE STREET

the Horsham road. Modern short cuts have
been devised which will save him from pass-
ing through Horsham itself; but he cannot
follow the straight line up the old Roman
way in a wheeled vehicle much further, for
its continuity, as we shall see a few pages
further on, is broken but a short distance to
the northward of this deflection at Five Oaks
Green.

All this part of the Stane Street from Five
Oaks, and beyond it as far as the point bear-
ing the name of Park Street l (a name obvi-
ously derived from the road), was restored
and kept up as a public way from the middle
of the eighteenth century, but beyond Park
Street no attempt was made to restore it
to use until 1809.

It is easy to see why the eighteenth cen-
tury restored it up to Park Street : it would
make — in the general rebuilding of roads in
that time — a communication between the
village of Slinfold and the south. That it
was not restored up the next mile further
to the river until 1809 was possibly due

1 This point is at the first turning to the right 400 yards
after crossing the railway. The road to the right goes
to Slinfold, which is in the immediate neighbourhood.

HARDHAM TO ALFOLDEAN 249

to the fact that the old bridge had been
allowed to break down x and had never been
renewed ; so that wheeled vehicles proceeding
from Slinfold to Guildford and all the points
in West Surrey had to make a detour of 4
or 5 miles in order to join the east and
west road. That is all of a piece with what
we know of the rarity of communication in
the centuries between ancient and modern
civilisation across the Weald.

At any rate, in 1809, the old track was
taken over by the Duke of Norfolk of the
day, as a speculation, metalled right up to
the Arun, and a bridge there thrown over
the stream. From that date, therefore, the
Stane Street could be used as a continuous
road all the way from its first to its second
crossing of the river.

It reaches the river again at a point exactly
10 miles 550 yards from its former crossing-
place at Pulborough, and just to the south
of the river-crossing and the east of the
way lies the second of the stations, that called
after the bridge " Alfoldean."

The station at Alfoldean Bridge is to-day

1 I have no evidence on this point. It is a mere con-
jecture.

250 THE STANE STREET

not as clearly marked as the station at Hard-
ham.

This is curious, because it retained until
modern times relics of brick buildings, there
being no considerable mediaeval establishment
near by to use it as a quarry. But for some
reason or other, the vestiges which were clear
one hundred years ago are now very in-
distinct.

The site is said by recent observers to be a
natural gravel site coming accidentally in the
midst of the clay.1 I have seen no proof of
this myself upon the spot, though I have
examined it carefully. The field is of the
same soil as those around it, at least super-
ficially and to the plough.

This year (1912) a few feet of mosaic were
turned up in it. I found the line of the
bank and ditch less distinct even than it
was a year ago, and far less than when I first
saw the place in the early nineties.

1 Dallaway, who was Rector of Slinfold, thought (and says
in his History) that gravel was artificially brought for the
purposes of the Stane Street and of the station, but further
research claims to have disproved this. It must be re-
marked, however, that the old series of Ordnance Geological
Maps marks no gravel ; the new series has not yet reached
this point.

c

FROM ALFOLDEAN BRIDGE TO DORKING

The third section of the Stane Street — that
is, the day's inarch between the second and
the third station — can be limited exactly as to
its southern terminus : its northern terminus
can, as we have seen, only be conjectured.

That portion of the Stane Street which
runs from the camp at Alfoldean Bridge
(which I have called the second mansio) to
that point in Dorking where I conjecture the
third camp or mansio to have lain, is perhaps
the most interesting of the five day's marches
into which the road divides itself. It con-
tains at once the greatest proportion of dis-
used track and the most perfectly preserved
piece of the road which has remained, pro-
bably from the time of its original construc-
tion, in uninterrupted use.

The total distance from the river bank and
the northern limit of Alfoldean Camp to the
junction of West Street, High Street, and

251

252 THE STANE STREET

South Street in Dorking is 10 miles 6|
furlongs, of which 7 miles 3 furlongs are the
continuation of the alignment from Pul-
borough to Leith Hill, and bring one to the
terminal point upon the shoulder of Leith
Hill, whence a new alignment is taken on to
Juniper Hill for passing the Dorking Gap.

The first 200 yards after the crossing of
the Arun nearly coincides with the metalled
road which leads from Alfoldean Bridge to
the point called Roman's Gate, where the road
restored in 1809 falls into the Horsham and
Guildford road.

I say " very nearly " because usage led the
old green lane (the metalling of which in
1809 provided the restoration of the Roman
road) just slightly to the west of the original
line, or rather in a sort of curve which, at its
greatest, is some 10 or 11 yards off the direct
alignment. It is probable that the Roman
Bridge stood nearly 30 feet to the east of the
present Alfoldean Bridge, for it is such a
point that fits in with the exact alignment
between Park Street and Rowhook.

North of the Horsham and Guildford road
the passage of the Stane Street is very con-
fused. It is not exactly lost, for a modern

ALFOLDEAN TO DORKING 253

lane and bank not quite corresponding with
it, follows it up as far as the School House at
Oak Pollard, and as this line also runs along
the edge of a wood, now just inside that edge,
now just outside it (the Wood is called Roman
Wood), a further element of confusion is intro-
duced ; but it can be followed by taking a few
clear points. The shed of Waterland Farm
stands upon it. It just cuts the corner of the
road at Oak Pollard, and exactly corresponds
to the entrance of the Chequers Inn at Row-
hook. The Chequers Inn at Rowhook is less
than 6 furlongs from the camp at Alfoldean
and the crossing of the Arun : yet in that
short distance the Stane Street has risen 166
feet. Alfoldean Bridge is just under 84 feet
above the sea, the Chequers Inn just under
250. The Chequers Inn at Rowhook is also
the point where another Roman road left
the Stane Street and branched off north-
west.

With regard to this second road, there has
been a great deal of inquiry, and not a little
doubt has been expressed of its existence. I
do not share these doubts, for I know, after
many years' observation, and in more than
one province, how utterly and inexplicably a

254 THE STANE STREET

Boman road will disappear, and how rightly
one may infer its existence from no more
than two points upon its alignment. This
particular road points directly at the camp
on Farleigh Heath (which is most undoubtedly
Roman), and what is more, the distance from
Alfoldean Camp to this other Camp on Far-
leigh Heath is that of a short but quite
normal day's march — all but 9 miles.1

The Stane Street proceeds north-east from

1 As to where this north-westerly road may have pro-
ceeded after the camp on Farleigh Heath, I have found no
evidence. The alignment prolonged does not strike Guild-
ford, but leads up to St. Martha's Chapel, leaving that
building on the left, or to the west, and passing just over
the shoulder of its isolated hill ; but I know of no remains
of any road on this line.

We may be perfectly certain that a Roman military road
negotiated somewhere the passage of the Wey, and the fact
that Guildford existed in the Dark Ages is excellent ground
for supposing that it also existed in Roman times, but
whether this road pointed at Guildford and there struck
another road between that crossing of the river and
London, we have no evidence upon which to decide.

The evidence for the existence of the road from Rowhook
to that point just under Winterfold (where it is lost) was
furnished to the Ordnance by Mr. Harrison, Mr. Worsfold,
and Mr. Barlow. It has been traced by the flints used in
the metalling of it over the clay in various parts of the
parishes of Ewhurst and Cranleigh. The part near the
Chequers and Rowhook is the least evident, but the align-
ment points exactly at the Chequers.

ALFOLDEAN TO DORKING 255

Kowhook, now through copses, now through
fields, forming a boundary for the most part,
and always clearly traceable until at a mile
and a quarter from Rowhook it comes to the
buildings of Monk's Farm. In this mile and a
quarter it presents no remarkable feature
save that in spite of the deep clay of the soil
and the sharp gullies, such as that of Honey-
lane Gill, it has nowhere disappeared : in one
place it spanned a ravine with an embank-
ment over a culvert. This embankment now
hangs in a great ruin over the stream, but
has not yet fallen.

Nowhere in this stretch is it used as a road,
though the right-of-way exists along it in
some parts, and a path often runs either
along it or beside it.

For nearly a mile after Monk's Farm it coin-
cides either exactly or nearly with the green
lane running north and east from that point.
It corresponds with it exactly for the first
quarter of a mile, then for the next quarter
the lane runs not on it but along it to the
east. During the remaining half-mile, or
nearly a half-mile, it corresponds with the lane
again. At a point not quite half-way in this
stretch (to be accurate, 3 furlongs from Monk's

256 THE STANE STREET

Farm), it crosses the county boundary, and
those interested in the evidence for an old
road will note that from before Rowhook right
up to the county boundary, the Stane Street
is the frontier between two ancient parishes,
Rudgwick and Warnham. Each of them is a
typical forest parish, running up backwards
from its centre of habitation into its hunting-
ground of the Weald.

The end of this stretch of not quite a mile
from Monk's Farm is a point where the lane
falls into the metalled road near Oakwood
Hill, with its collection of cottages and black-
smith's forge. It proceeds over an open
field, where it is very clearly marked indeed,
and a quarter of a mile further on plunges
down a steep bank to cross the Holden Brook
— one of the tributaries that feed the Arun
from the northern Weald.

This, the first stream of any size which the
Stane Street has had to pass on its way
north from Alfoldeari Bridge, is at a distance
of 3 miles and not quite a half from that
starting-point, and it merits very careful
attention, for it illustrates more than one
feature in the engineering and history of
this Roman road.

ALFOLDEAN TO DORKING 257

In the first place, this point (which I will
call Holden Brook Crossing) is an example of
the way in which the Eoman engineers took
such steep pitches as a modern road would
avoid. It is the steepness of the bank above
the brook which has caused the modern road
here to go round a couple of hundred yards
to the west, and that, by the way, is typical
of the fashion in which modern roads have
grown up round the Stane Street, now coin-
ciding with it, now diverging from it. The
bank above the crossing of the brook was too
steep to be taken absolutely directly, and a
double zigzag led the wheeled traffic down
to the water. No trace of the Roman bridge
across the brook remains. The Stane Street
lies straight over the open field to the northern
side of the stream, and 300 yards from the
crossing coincides with the metalled high-
way.

From this point right through Ockley
village and on to the gate of Buckinghill
Farm, a total distance of over 2^ miles, the
Stane Street has been used for centuries as
the principal highway of the district, and is
to-day a broad modern road. Why it should
have exactly survived here and have fallen

258 THE STANE STREET

out of use to the north and to the south of
this stretch, is another subject of inquiry, but
not one capable of decision.

At any rate, the best known, the best pre-
served part of the Stane Street, begins at this
point and runs right through Ockley village.
It never loses its alignment ; it is everywhere
a metalled road ; it has been in constant use
for centuries, and may quite possibly have
been in continuous use from Roman times to
our own day. The total length of this pre-
served portion is a few yards over 2J miles,
and it comes to an end sharply at the gate
which is the entry to Buckinghill Farm.
Here the modern road diverges right away to
the east, running round the base of the hill
which the Stane Street climbs and surmounts.
It is in use up to the farm buildings of
Buckinghill Farm, running through this private
field as a typical raised causeway, once per-
haps normal to its whole length but now lost
in the public portions of the road.

After passing Buckinghill Farm the Stane
Street runs in a very slight curve up the
spinny along the side of a ravine. It is most
clearly marked by a partial cutting just
behind (to the west) of Bearehurst House,

ALFOLDEAN TO DORKING 259

runs under the lodge of a new house below
Minnickwood Farm, previous to which it
climbs by another well-marked cutting sunk
into the hill, and nowadays overgrown with
yew and holly.

Thenceforward it must be traced by careful
examination through the open field. At this
point it is not sufficient to take the straight
line and look for the road upon it ; for by
an accident, the probable cause of which I
will now proceed to discuss, the Stane Street,
as it approaches the buildings of Anstie
Grange Farm, diverges slightly eastward from
its alignment (not 200 feet at its most distant
point), and forms a sort of flat arc of which
the direct alignment is a chord. Why does
the Stane Street behave so curiously at this
point? There is, I think, a conjectural argu-
ment that may be made out.

On a former page of this book (pp. 97-100)
I spoke of the point north and a little east of
the house called "Moorhurst" which formed
the terminal point where the alignment com-
ing northwards from the Borough Hill near
Pulborough and the next alignment coming
southwards from Dorking Gap met. But this
point must be described in more detail than I

260 THE STANE STREET

then gave to it, if the slight divergence of
the road at this point is to be understood.

The straight line of the southern alignment
from Pulborough and Alfoldean northward
and so through Ockley strikes exactly the
gate between Anstie Grange Farm and its
barn, and from precisely the same point the
next or northern limb that negotiates Dorking
Gap takes its rise.

From this it might be imagined that the
high scaffolding and pole, or whatever other
mark was used for drawing the alignments
from distant point to distant point, was set
up by the Roman engineers precisely at this
spot.

But it is not likely that this was the case.

Anyone visiting the locality will see why.
All this shoulder of Leith Hill is a difficult one
to turn. It presents no one conspicuous point
from which a commanding observation could be
taken north and south — at least not one point
upon the fairly flat shelf below the last steep
rise to the summit. This shelf is undulating,
and any mark set upon one of its hollows
would be hidden from the north and the south
unless it were very high indeed. On the
other hand, a mark set well up on the hill

ALFOLDEAN TO DORKING 261

(as, for instance, on the 800-foot summit, which
is included in Anstiebury Camp itself) would
have led the road far too high up the steep
hillside and condemned travel to a useless and
even dangerous labour.

What would seem to have been done is
this : —

Just where the steep part of the hill begins,
there is an open field lying immediately
under the wood (a comparatively modern
plantation) called Ryefield Copse. Thence
a moderate scaffolding commands a view to
the north and to the south. From this
point of vantage, which is well above the
500-foot contour, the engineers would seem
to have directed the placing of somewhat
lower marks, one to the north the other to
the south — the one to the south command-
ing the view over the Weald, but hidden
from the Dorking Gap : the one to the north
commanding the Dorking Gap but hidden
from the Weald. The southern one was
perhaps fixed upon the ridge (now crowned
with pines) immediately behind Bearehurst
at a height of some 450 feet. The northern
one may well have stood on the high ground
rather more than half a mile to the north,

262 THE STAKE STREET

which all but touches the 500-foot con-
tour and exactly corresponds to the long
spinney lying east of Folly Farm in South
Holm wood. An alignment southward from
this last and another alignment northward
from the mark near Bearehurst would meet
at the gate of Anstie Grange Farm. But
between Bearehurst and Anstie Grange Farm
the road deflected somewhat from this exact
alignment in order to avoid the beginning
of the steep which the exact alignment
crosses. Its goes round, therefore, a trifle
to the east (200 feet at the most, as I have
said), the point of its greatest distance from
the direct alignment being a point where
it crosses the small watercourse flowing from
Ryefield Copse, which later becomes the
anonymous " brook " of Brookwood and flows
under the railway 500 yards south-west of
Holmwood Station.

From Anstie Grange Farm the line of the
road is easily followed. It runs through
the copse called Betchet's Green Copse right
in front of Eedlands, across the long spinny
east of Folly Farm, where I have supposed
the secondary mark to be established, and
so on to an outlying projection of Redland

ALFOLDEAN TO DORKING 263

Position of Secondary Northern Terr,
Aligned on Juniper Hill.

iary Southern Terminal
Aligned on Boro' Hill near Pulboro'.

9 100, YDS.

^-^ Contour Lines,

SCALE OF j£ MILE
X

FIG. 20.

264 THE STANE STREET

Wood. Here an exact alignment would
compel the road to run for some 50 yards or
so in the bed of the little stream that runs
through Hambridge Bottom. To avoid doing
this, it diverges very slightly to the left or
west, but soon recovers its alignment, passes
within a few yards of the Smithy on Holm-
wood Common, and keeps its straight course
to the neighbourhood of the crossing Bent's
Brook.

Had the Stane Street continued to go
straight on from that point, it would have
been condemned to the impossible task of
crossing right over Tower Hill and of going
up and down the very steep and broken
summits which dominate Dorking from the
south and east. It did not do this. It de-
flected in a curve which takes it right through
the buildings of Bent's Brook Farm and slowly
swings it round to the sand-pit at the bottom
of Tower Hill. It is next identical with the
modern road as far as the next cross-roads
in Dorking itself, which lead to the Nore
on the west and the Waterworks on the
east. At this place, where the modern road
leaves it and deflects round the hill to the west
to avoid the steep, the Roman way is pointing

ALFOLDEAN TO DORKING 265

straight at that junction of the three main
Dorking Streets, High Street, West Street, and
South Street, which I have conjectured to be
the centre of the third station or camp. Its
course between this point at the cross-roads
and the meeting of the three main streets
in the town (where it has been seen) is lost, and
I can find no trace of it in local records of
building. The gap is a yard or two over half
a mile. I can see no reason, however, why
it should not have proceeded in its straight
course, which would not have imposed upon it
a gradient steeper than others which it attacks
in the course of its 50 miles. Supposing it to
have pursued this straight line, it would form
the foundation of the western front of Dork-
ing Workhouse, would pass behind the houses
on the east side of the South Street, and would
soon come to the central point in Dorking
which I have named.

D

FROM DORKING TO MERTON ABBEY

If we take (as I conceive we are bound to
take) the position of the third mansio or
station as lying somewhere within 100 yards
of the junction of West Street, High Street,
and South Street, Dorking: and if for the
purpose of our convention we take a terminal
exactly at this junction, we have from that
point to the south end of London Bridge
measured in a straight line precisely 22 miles.
Indeed that measurement is so nearly accurate,
that though there is a very slight excess, it is
certainly an excess of less than 50 yards.

The first thing that strikes us in such a
stretch is that it is too long for a single day's
march. Not (as was discussed in an earlier
part of this book) that troops cannot and
have not frequently marched for very much
longer distances, but that the regular establish-
ment of a day's journey from post to post
must always be considerably less, and (as I

DORKING TO MERTON ABBEY 267

have pointed out elsewhere) in the neighbour-
hood of more or less than 13 miles : prefer-
ably rather slightly less than slightly more.

We may therefore take it as certain that a
fourth mansio or station broke this line
somewhere between Dorking and London.

In our general considerations of the Stane
Street, general arguments were put forward
to show why Merton might probably be re-
garded as the site of this station. To these
arguments we will return more particularly
in their proper place in this section, but for
the purposes of defining the fourth stretch of
the road, as I conjecture it to have been, I
will take for its terminal the point of Merton
Bridge where the main modern road from
London crosses the River Wandle, and I shall
hope to establish in what follows the con-
nection between this site and the fourth camp
upon the road between Chich ester and London.

I cannot, however, here pretend to the
same conjectural accuracy as I believe to
have been possible in the case of the Dorking
station. I can only premise that in the im-
mediate neighbourhood of this river crossing
the fourth station lay, and I shall later discuss
whether it was to the north or to the south of

268 THE STAKE STREET

that crossing, and what its position may have
been to the mediaeval Abbey of Merton.

Of this fourth section of the road (as I
shall presume it to be) only a small portion
remains visible to-day, and even the parts
which can be re-established fairly certainly
from analogy or from the surer guide of
adjacent remaining portions, form but a small
proportion of the whole distance. Measured
along what we shall in the ensuing argument
discover or suppose to be the actual line of
the road, the distance from the point taken in
Dorking where West Street and High Street
meet, to the Bridge over the Wandle, is
14 miles.

The distance from our terminal in Dorking
to the nearest point at which (as we shall see)
the camp could, with any probability, have
been established, is 12 miles and 4^ furlongs.

Now, whether we take the shorter or the
longer estimate, whether we regard tnat
fourth day's march as having been plotted
out for a distance of more than 14 miles to a
point just north of the Wandle, or for a
distance of just over 12 miles to a point just
south of the complicated crossing of that
river, the total amount of the road in that

DORKING TO MERTON ABBEY 269

stretch which remains visible is remarkably
small. The certain portion actually traceable
by the eye to-day is but 2j miles, if that
(from the summit near Cherkley Court to the
point where the road is lost upon Epsom
Downs). Even if we add to this the small
sections that have appeared in the widening
of the Burford Bridge road, the indications
of the passage of the Stane Street between
Dorking and Burford Bridge and the trace
which it has left upon the lawn of Juniper
Hall, we do not get 3 miles out of the total
distance. All the rest is conjectural.

Luckily, however, that part of the road
which can be certainly established has been
preserved in a situation where an exact align-
ment pointing to London Bridge can be
proved, and this, with a number of other
circumstances to which I shall refer the
problem, gives us the ground we have for
believing the road to have crossed the
Wandle at Merton.

Upon leaving that camp which we must
believe to have disappeared under the turning
and re-turning of the earth within the in-
habited district of Dorking, the Stane Street
made at once for that crossing of the river Mole

270 THE STANE STREET

to which it was directed in the first general
survey made by the Roman engineers.

That general survey was, as we have seen
throughout this book, invariably conducted
from one height to another in great "sights,"
from the line of which the road might be
compelled to deflect (as in fact it had deflected
along the broken hills to the south of Dork-
ing), but to which it always returned at the
earliest opportunity. Before that deflection
round the broken hills south of Dorking, we
left the Stane Street pointing directly at a
piece of high ground upon the shoulder of
Juniper Hill, and with that point was aligned
the crossing of the river Mole. With that
direction exactly corresponded the passage at
Burford Bridge, which remains of the Roman
road prove to have been the exact point where
the Stane Street crossed that river, just as
the modern bridge at Pulborough and the
modern bridge at Alfoldean are equally
certainly crossings restoring the ancient
Roman passages of the Arun.1

1 As a matter of fact the modern bridge is some fifty
feet east of the point where the Stane Street crossed the
Mole. The line can be distinctly seen crossing the meadow
on the north bank, a meadow which is bounded by the
London Road,

DORKING TO MERTON ABBEY 271

From the central point in Dorking just
named, the Stane Street is lost during the
next mile and 5 furlongs which take it to
Burford Bridge. The only indication we
have of it in this section is the observation
recorded by Aubrey and Camden, that it
passed through the north-western corner of
St. Martin's churchyard.1

I have carefully examined the whole ground
from the churchyard to Burford Bridge upon
this alignment, and can find no certain trace
of the road.2 There are, indeed, here and
there, very slight indications in the shape of
a ridge or bank, but short of excavation by
the proprietors of this section, I do not think
it can be established at any one place.

After crossing the Mole, however, it is
quite clear, though not so clear as it was some
years ago when, during the widening of the
present road and the making of a cutting for
it, the junction of the Stane Street coming in

1 This has been disputed, apparently upon the principle
that modern science must dispute every authentic ancient
record. But we have for it not only ocular testimony, but
the fact that a direct alignment would lie precisely across
that corner of the churchyard.

* The right-of-way and footpath across the fields, which
has sometimes been inaccurately confounded with the line
of the Stane Street here, does not correspond with it.

272 THE STANE STREET

across the field to the west was clearly seen.
It is probable that the modern road from the
summit of the hill above Burford Bridge as
far as the lodge of Juniper Hall corresponds
or nearly corresponds with the Stane Street.
It is true that the exact alignment would take
the Koman road over the high bank to the
east of this section of the modern road, but
we know from analogous places that the
Roman way would have been slightly de-
flected to avoid a pitch of this kind.

After the lodge at Juniper Hall the modern
road leaves the Stane Street, the next few
miles of which are, with the exception of one
or two short gaps, singularly clear.

It has been seen in the course of making
the lawn at Juniper Hall, clearly crossing that
lawn under its magnificent cedars and between
the house and the high road. At the back
of the house it breasts the steep of Juniper Hill
and curves round that precipitous promontory,
rising from the 200-foot contour to the 400-
foot in a long sweep, which runs parallel to
and just above the public way called the
Downs Road.1

i I use the word "public" rightly or wrongly. There
may be no right-of-way. At any rate the land is enclosed.

DORKING TO MERTON ABBEY 273

On leaving the lodge upon Juniper Hill,
the Stane Street has to cross a bit of open
Down and a very steep combe lying within
the private grounds of Mickleham Downs
House. I believe it to be indisputable that
the Roman way deflected to the east, as the
modern lane does, and did not cross the
combe directly, the northern side of the
combe being too steep for it. But it is re-
markable that before the combe, on the open
Down, where it had every chance of preserva-
tion, it is entirely lost. No explanation can
be offered for this, but it is analogous to
hundreds of other cases in Britain and Gaul,
where a Roman road on the open and uncul-
tivated chalk, where it would have the best
chances of survival, is suddenly broken by a
gap in which it totally disappears. At any
rate, on the northern or further side of the
combe it begins one of the most interesting
of those sections in which it has most clearly
survived.

Nowhere else in the home counties can a
Roman road which has not been metalled
for modern use be followed so easily. Nor
has any other remained in such thorough pre-
servation of its original condition. The

274 THE STANE STREET

stretch is one of 2 miles, and there is a
right-of-way through the whole length. It
bears the local name of Pebble Lane, as also
of that mysterious popular and ancient term
Ermine Street, which we find attached not
only to the great northern road out of London,
but to other sections of Roman roads up and
down the country without any apparent topo-
graphical connection.

For the first mile of this section, the Stane
Street is a modern lane pointing as straight
as an arrow just under 29° East of North.
And it is particularly to be observed that this
direction also points precisely at the southern
terminus of old London Bridge. No sight
dominating the Thames valley could be taken
from this point. Where such a sight could be
found I will discuss in a moment, first pre-
mising that a mark must have been taken
at what I have called the point "C" upon
the promontory of Juniper Hill, which the
reader will find discussed upon pp. 102-4 ; the
intervening part between the origin of this
straight section near Mickleham Downs House
and the point further on where the first view
of the Thames valley could be obtained must
have been established by back-sighting.

DORKING TO MERTON ABBEY 275

All this first mile, then, of the survival runs
on a clearly defined bank, which is that of the
old Eoman way. It skirts the property
called Cherkley Court, plunges into a steep
hollow falling from a summit of 411 feet to
360, and then takes an extremely steep
gradient up to the lodge of the house called
Tyrrell's Wood. It was at this second
summit (just over 430 feet) that I believe
the sight to the Thames valley was taken.
On a clear day one can from this point dis-
cover London, and in particular (though now
it is nearly always veiled in a smoky haze)
the point where the Roman bridge of London
crossed the Thames.

The distance is considerable. It is one
of 17| miles, but similar stretches of align-
ment, though rare, are to be discovered in the
scheme of Roman roads in this country and
in Northern France. And at any rate, the
alignment is far too perfect to be considered
for one moment a coincidence.

As the Stane Street proceeds northward
from this high summit, the modern lane does
not exactly follow it, but goes now to the left,
now to the right, using the ditch which
flanked it upon either side, until, at the end

276 THE STANE STREET

of the 2-mile stretch, it comes to that diffi-
cult junction which I have already dealt with
on pp. 109-10. I will not here repeat the
arguments there used, but it is worth while
telling the reader what difficulties lie in the
way of my own hypothesis.

The point in question where the two miles
of straight and visible road end, is one at the
summit of a hill just above and to the south
of Thirty Acres Barn. At this point the
modern lane branches off at an angle of about
15° to the east, and would seem to be making
for Croydon. It has been hardened in the
remote past, still bears the traditional name
of the Ermine Street, and has always been
regarded as the continuation of the Roman
road. By my hypothesis the main line of
the Stane Street did not follow this road
branching off to the east, but continued right
on to the crossing of the Wandle and to
London Bridge. No indication of it remains.
A ploughed field with no trace of a way upon
it sweeps down to the valley. Beyond this
again there is open grass, and then for many
miles a succession of private grounds, woods,
and the outskirts of Epsom and Ewell, until
one reaches the neighbourhood of Merton

< Q

DORKING TO MERTON ABBEY 277

Abbey itself, and during all those miles no
trace of the road. If it did, as I believe,
follow this alignment, there are at any rate
no clear remaining evidences of its passage.
It should have crossed quite close to the
Durdans, not 200 yards to the east of that
house, through Pit Place and Pit Place Farm,
crossing the main line of the L. B. & S. C. Ry.
close to Hall's Bridge, and so on, missing
Ewell just as it missed Epsom, proceeding
through Nonsuch Park, going right through
the grounds of West Hill House, within a few
yards of the school building at Morden, until
it struck the bifurcating ways at Morden Hall
upon the Wandle.1

The whole of my argument is based upon
the exact alignment of the Stane Street
where it has survived with the direction of
London Bridge, and upon the identity of the
crossing of the Wandle with Merton Abbey,
and with the royal land of Merton.

This latter point will seem perhaps of less

1 There have been certain finds within the neighbourhood
of this line, and Roach Smith (Journal of the Archaeological
Association, vol. xxxii. p. 481) argues for it in Ewell Parish,
but not anywhere near the alignment I take. It is of
course evident that no indication not identical with the
alignment is of service to my hypothesis.

278 THE STANE STREET

importance to those who have not visited the
spot than it does to me, but I confess that a
survey of the ground is not unconvincing.

You have here a marsh across which it
has been impracticable to attempt a causeway.
You have a road forming an elbow round
that marsh following land which the contours
of the Ordnance Map, being too few, do
not distinguish, but which forms everywhere
a sort of bank above low-lying flooded
meadows. You have a bridge taking the
Wandle just where its various streams unite.
You have a modern road immediately beyond
that bridge (the Merton road and Tooting High
Street) which, though it continually deviates
by a trifle east or west, is quite evidently
based upon the alignment in question.
Finally, you have a great religious establish-
ment and a royal villa fixed at Merton during
the Dark Ages.

You have, therefore, certain communications
through the Dark Ages between that point
and London, that point as certainly a main
crossing of the river (which nearly every-
where in the Dark Ages corresponded with
a Roman road, and which we have found so
to correspond on this road at the crossings

DORKING TO MERTON ABBEY 279

of the Mole and the Arun), and you have
the analogy of all the early religious houses,
or nearly all, standing on one of the few
similar arteries which maintained travel until
the Middle Ages.

These considerations have compelled me
to believe that Merton represents the fourth
station upon the road, and that, though the
alignment is lost through all those miles
between Epsom and Morden Hall, the loss
is accountable to the same causes as have
destroyed all vestige of Roman roads and of
the Stane Street itself through cultivated
land elsewhere, and even upon untouched
open chalk Down.

E

FROM MERTON ABBEY TO LONDON BRIDGE

The last section, from the crossing of the
Wandle at Merton Abbey to London Bridge,
should provide, one might think, the most
ample material of all, for it has been the most
continuously inhabited and has lain for cen-
turies within a walk of a great city. It has,
upon the contrary, provided me with none.

The building of South London, had records
serviceable to archaeology been kept, would
certainly have furnished a mass of testimony
as to the passage of the Stane Street through
it. But as no records of any sort seem to have
been preserved, the task is perfectly hopeless.

We have (as I pointed out in my section
upon the modern divergences upon p. 205)
the names Newington Butts and Newington
Causeway. We have also the place-name
Streatham (but this more probably was
drawn from a road coming in from the south-
east and joining the Stane Street), and we

280

FROM MERTON ABBEY 281

have, as London Bridge is approached, a
whole series of finds which indicate the
passage of a great Roman way south from
the river, upon a line more or less correspond-
ing to the Borough.1 But of anything like
the proof which we have found for the rural
portions of the way, we look in vain. All
we can say is what has been said before —
that the strict alignment taken from Epsom
Downs to Old London Bridge carries us over
the Wandle precisely at Merton, and that
of the 7i miles between that point and
London Bridge, at least 4 exactly correspond
with the alignment (in particular, the long
stretch between Clapham and Newington),
and that the remaining 3J, less than half of
the whole, are but slight divergences from it.
It is possible or probable that further
research will establish at least two points
upon this line, and two would be enough to
make certain that hypothesis upon which I
have worked in drawing the last stage of the
Stane Street in a direct line from Merton
Bridge to that spot just north of St Glair's

1 Thus the cemetery discovered in 1818, the Burnt
Burial found in the building of Southwark Town Hall, the
same in the Borough High Street, &c.

282 THE STANE STREET

Church behind London Bridge Station where
the Roman Bridge and its mediaeval successor
abutted upon the southern bank of the
Thames.

But until such evidence is forthcoming we
have nothing but the few indications I have
mentioned to establish the line, and the
strong argument that the alignment on
Epsom Downs is coincident with that line,

In such an unsatisfactory state I am com-
pelled to leave the last and most difficult
problem connected with the road.

NOTE A

ON THE ALIGNMENT FROM LEATHERHEAD
DOWNS TO OLD LONDON BRIDGE

THE reader will have noted in the text repeated
allusions to the precision of the alignment of
the Stane Street upon the Southern Bridge end
of old London Bridge during the last limb of that
highway.

As no more than 2 miles (or a little less) of
the original road remains visible, and that at the
end of the alignment furthest from London Bridge,
it might be doubted at first sight whether the
coincidence upon which my alignment is based
can be properly established. Most writers who
have dealt with this matter say vaguely that the
Stane Street in this section of its trajectory
' ' points generally in the direction of London
Bridge," or " appears to point towards London
Bridge." I have taken measurements as accurate
as were in my power, and I think I can show that
the degree of precision with which the alignment
points at old London Bridge is far greater than
has been or might be imagined.

The remaining straight piece of the road upon
Leatherhead Downs becomes first visible at a

283

284 THE STANE STREET

point upon the summit of the steep north side of
Mickleham Combe, just at the end of the boun-
dary between Cherkley Court and the property
called Mickleham Downs.

The line, which is absolutely unswerving, can
be followed in the clearest fashion from summit
to summit until one reaches the top of the hill
above Thirty Acres Barn. The total distance
from the one point to the other I make to be
3484 yards, and the angle at which the perfectly
direct line of these 3484 yards is driven I make
to be as nearly as possible 28 degrees 54 minutes
East of the Meridian, or 61 degrees 6 minutes
North of East.

Now, what limit of error is one to allow in this
measurement ? It is a matter, of course, for the
judgment of anyone who chooses to visit the
spot and to notice how the line can be followed
from summit to summit. An old road is not
a mathematical line. It has breadth, and its
edges are sometimes broken ; but it is safe to say
that an error of 5 yards upon either side of
the terminal mark, or a total error of 10 yards,
is very much greater than the error that would
be made even without instruments of precision by
an ordinarily accurate observer measuring only by
the unaided eye and taking back-sights from one
point to another. I say that 5 yards either
way would be too great an error. Personally, I am
quite convinced that a degree of accuracy one-
fifth of this, or 1 yard upon either side, was

NOTES 285

easily obtainable when I measured the Way.
But my argument is only the stronger if I admit
so large a margin of error as 10 yards. Now, a
margin of error 10 yards in 3484 yards gives an
angular margin of error of just under 10 minutes
of a degree. When I add that such an angle is
equivalent to a third of the apparent diameter of
the sun or moon, it will be apparent that I am allow-
ing a very wide margin indeed for neglect or bad
sighting.

Well, the total distance from the point of origin
at Mickleham Combe to the present embank-
ment on the southern shore of the Thames near
London Bridge, I make to be 33,050 yards-^
within a very few yards more or less. Here the
uncertainty is of no vast importance to a hundred
yards or so, for one three-hundredth more or less
in the length of so exceedingly prolonged a
triangle is of no appreciable effect in the measure-
ment of its angles. The distance is certainly over
33,000 yards, and certainly under 33,100.

In other words, the total alignment up to the
Thames is a good deal less than ten times the
length of the part still visible upon Leatherhead
Downs. A possible error of 10 yards, therefore, hi
the measurement of the angle of the former,
becomes upon the bank of the Thames less than
100 yards — or less than 50 yards either way. It
is, as I have said, more probable that my true
limits of error were but one-fifth of this very
ample margin. If, therefore, the alignment pro-

286 THE STANE STREET

longed falls well within that limit of error, we may
take our point as established. Now, the alignment
does fall well within it, as anyone may see for
himself by striking upon the 6-inch or 25-inch
map the angle I have postulated — 28 degrees 54
minutes East of the Meridian. He will find that
from the point of origin I have taken it strikes
as nearly as possible the point behind London
Bridge Station and 50 yards to the east of
modern London Bridge, where old London Bridge,
and therefore presumably the Roman bridge,
started to cross the river.

But there is more than this. The line so drawn
upon the map will be found to strike the Marshes
of the Wandle precisely at that point outside the
paling of Morden Hall where four Ways meet and
where the <c elbow" gets round the Marshes.
This " elbow " strikes off to the north past Morden
Station, the Prince of Wales public-house, the
Congregational Church, and turns to the east at the
corner of Grove House grounds. The alignment is
exactly recovered again at the point in Merton High
Street where that street turns round north-east-
wards and makes directly for London, imme-
diately after the crossing of the Wandle by the
bridge.

The line further prolonged exactly coincides
with the Clapham Road ; passes immediately in
front of the remains of the Roman building found
in 1840 a hundred yards north of St. George's
Church in Southwark. Four hundred yards

NOTES 287

further on it passes immediately along and in
front of the Roman pavement discovered just at
the corner of St. Thomas's Street, and 100 yards
further again it passes immediately in front
of another pavement and traces of walls and a
building found in 1840 upon the site of what had
formerly been St. Thomas's Hospital.1

Within fifty yards of the river it passes right
over the Roman remains marked in Brock's Map,
and finally strikes the river bank just where the
southern abutment of old London Bridge lay,
to the east of the modern bridge.

Exactitude of this sort cannot possibly be a
coincidence, and is, I think, sufficient to prove the
thesis I have put forward in this book.

1 Exactly where the Tube Station is to-day.

NOTE B

THE PARALLEL OF THE PORT WAY

THE reader will have noticed in the pages of
this book many references to the loss of a Roman
road without explicable cause: that is, the loss
of some parts of an alignment without any re-
maining condition of soil or cultivation to account
for such loss ; while under conditions apparently
precisely .similar other portions of the alignment
have survived.

The fact that phenomena of this sort are ap-
parent in the Roman road system of all Northern
Gaul and Britain is the foundation of the argu-
ment upon which I have based my conviction
that the Stane Street, though it has utterly dis-
appeared from beyond Epsom Racecourse to at
least as far as Morden Hall, and though no physi-
cal remains of it have been discovered up to the
Thames itself, none the less did follow up to the
river the alignment of the portion still visible
upon Leatherhead Downs.

Now, the best example of this sort of inexpli-
cable loss, and equally inexplicable survival over
a considerable stretch (or at any rate the best
example in this country), is to be found in the

288

NOTES 289

latter or northern portion of the Port Way —
the Roman road running from Silchester to Old
Sarum. I have therefore carefully examined this
stretch, in order to come to a just conclusion,
and I discover it to prove beyond doubt the
possibility of a Roman road being utterly lost
over very great stretches of its alignment, though
permanently surviving over others in precisely
similar conditions.

I may, to support the strength of this conclu-
sion, quote the interesting fact that so great an
authority as Mr. Haverfield has been misled by
the apparent disappearance of this particular road.
He asserts (V.G.H., Hampshire, vol. i., p. 320)
that it has not been noticed "in the imme-
diate vicinity of Silchester," nor even looked for,
and believes it to be untraceable in the portion
(16 miles in length) to which I am alluding:
that is, the portion between the Bourne valley and
Silchester. Further, the scholarly authors of the
monograph upon Silchester (ibid., p. 350, &c.)
give the road upon their map as conjectural
only outside Silchester and as coming in at
the South Gate : as a fact, it came in by the West
Gate, as we shall see.

In other words, the case appears to be one of
complete loss without proof and only with a
conjecture of alignment. It so happens, however,
that upon close examination one finds the nor-
thern portion of the Port Way to be the example
of something very different, namely of that alter-

T

290 THE STANE STREET

nate loss and survival all upon one alignment
and each for no discoverable cause, which I have
postulated in my book. For, so far from the
whole of these 16 miles being obliterated, they
afford a very chain of disjointed surviving sections ;
and some parts of the surviving sections are so
well known and so clear that I confess a certain
astonishment at the error into which Mr. Haver-
field and his colleagues have fallen.

I will, for the benefit not only of the argument
in general, but of those who are interested in the
archaeology of Hampshire in particular, give these
sections point by point.

The " Port Way " is an existing road actually
in use to the west of the Bourne valley from the
neighbourhood of East Anton past Finkley House
to a farm called Middle Wyke Farm. Upon a
height just above this last, where it overlooks the
Bourne valley, its use as a modern highway ends.
It is from this point, over 16 miles from Sil-
chester, that the " lost " section which is of such
interest to our argument begins.

The first 3J miles of it (across the Bourne
valley and through Bradley Wood to the rail-
way) I am not yet competent to discuss in full,
but the remaining 13 miles — from where it
crosses the railways a mile south of Lichfield
Station to where it enters Silchester — I can de-
scribe in detail.

Ascertainable. — It forms a parish boundary from
the point called Clap Gate just on the railway, for

NOTES 291

a distance of 3 miles 5 furlongs, and it is further
evident to the eye as a green way forming the
boundary of plantations for 2| miles of this distance;
for the remaining three quarters of a mile it is
actually in use as a metalled road. It continues
to be clearly apparent in the same exact alignment
for nearly another mile, climbing the hill known
as King John's Hill and nearly reaching the
700-ft. contour. At this point it is very nearly
coincident with the watershed separating the
Thames valley from Southampton Water. At the
summit of the hill, for some undiscoverable reason,
though the soil is chalk and the Down quite open
the track that has come into use diverges wholly
first to the left and then to the right in great
bends from the Roman road. It is an exact
parallel to the case which we found upon Mickle-
hain Combe (p. 273) in the case of the Stane
Street.

Lost. — For the next 5 miles and more, generally
of fall, there seems to be no trace of the Port Way
left.

Ascertainable. — The road reappears again, though
very faintly, rather less than 2J miles further on,
just west of a farm called Foscot Farm; from
that farm to Silchester itself (a distance of 5J
miles) its trajectory is of peculiar interest.

Lost. — For the first quarter of a mile (going
eastward from the farm buildings) all visible
trace upon the surface has entirely disappeared:
but the people of the place still talk of " the old

292 THE STANE STREET

road to the farm." It is possible that a marshy
patch in a depression just here may account for
the breach of continuity, and there is a divergence
in the shape of a modern lane going round to the
north ; but this does not explain the total loss of
the road on the fields above the depression on
either side.

Ascertainable. — At the head of this short stretch,
just over a quarter of a mile from the farm build-
ings, the Port Way suddenly appears again, fully
visible, and much resembling portions of the
Stane Street upon the cultivated land of the
Upper Weald. It stands broad and slightly raised,
still keeping its exact alignment for just on a
quarter of a mile, then it disappears suddenly as a
road, but remains traceable and ascertainable in
the shape of a ridge supporting a hedge dividing
two fields, and in this shape it continues for
another quarter of a mile and makes altogether
half a mile of clearly ascertainable section.

Lost. — No apparent trace of it can be found
during the next mile and three-quarters.

Ascertainable. — It reappears as a continuous
though slightly raised and often breached line of
slightly elevated ridges from Skate's Farm, near
Tadley, to Tadley Bridge. It did not cross the
water precisely at the present bridge, however, but
a yard or two higher up the stream.

Lost. — From the junction of the road just below
the Inn at Tadley it disappears for a furlong.

Ascertainable. — Over the next furlong, covering

NOTES 293

the space from a cottage to the edge of Pamber
Forest, it exists in the shape of a commonly used
track, but not raised in any way nor traceable by
its material.

Lost. — Its line through Pamber Forest itself is
precisely 5 furlongs in length from the western
to the eastern edge of the wood, and in this old
piece of untouched timbered land, where of all
places it should have survived, the Port Way
utterly disappears.

Ascertainable. — On emerging from the trees
and in the swampy bottom between Pamber
Forest and Beggar's Bridge Wood (or Beggar's
Green Wood) it reappears quite clearly. This
reappearance of it as a raised mound is only
interrupted by the stream which drains this
marshy field. It appears precisely on the edge
of the forest, runs across the field and climbs into
the wood opposite. It is intermittently observable
as far as the high road, half a mile distant, and
though very faint just before striking that high
Road (which it does just at the foot of the hill
beneath Silchester village), there is for some 10
yards upon the other side of the road a marked
continuation of it.

Lost. — We are now within half a mile of the
Roman town of Silchester, and during that half
mile all trace of it has gone, unless indeed it may
have been discovered in the course of digging in
the grounds of Silchester Hall, right in front of
which country house it passes. It has been con-

294 THE STANE STREET

tinuously pointing and is still pointing in its last
appearance, not at the South Gate, but at the West
Gate of Silchester, just before the entry to which
it joined the other great Roman road, coming
down from Gloucester through Cirencester, Crick-
lade, Speen, &c.

INDEX

ABINGEB, 57

Ackling Dyke, the, 35 note

Adur, the river, 109, 110, 158

note

Agincourt, battle of, 32 note
Agricola, Emperor, 149, 150
Aisne, the, 36 note
Aix-la-Chapelle, 17, 62 note
Akeman Street, alignment of,

22, 23, 84
Alchester, 24 note
Alfoldean Bridge, 21, 85, 188-

91, 270; Koman camp at,

117-19, 122 note, 124, 135,

138, 139, 160, 240, 249-54 ;

ruin of, 161, 167, 174, 249
Alfred, king, 156
Alignment, advantages of

strict, 220 ; elementary

method of, 72-8
Alton, 156
Amiens, 21, 62 note
Andelle, the river, 62 note
Anderida, 147
Anderidan Wood, 41
Andover, 69 note
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the,

quoted, 156, 158, 159
Anstie Grange Farm, 196, 259,

260, 262

Anstiebury Camp, 196, 261
Anton Valley, the, 69 note, 81
Antonine Itinerary, the, 142,

143, 146, 148
Archaeologists, unwarrantable

assumptions of, 144
Aries, 165

Army, average march of an,

115, 132 note, 266
Arras, 17
Arun, the river, crossed by the

Stane Street, 32, 50, 58, 64,

87, 92, 110, 117, 181, 184,

213, 222, 249, 252, 270
Arundel, 158 note, 180
Arundel road, the, 214, 223, 247
Ashtead, 108, 135, 203
Ashurst, 184; Roman cutting

at, 236, 240
Asthall, 84
Attila, his use of a Roman

road, 34 note
Aubrey, John, quoted, 125

note, 271
Austrasia, Roman foundation

of, 17, 18
Auxiliaries of the Roman army,

6

Avon Bridge, 186 note
Avon, the river, 24

BAB, 17

Barbarism, vanishes before

Roman civilisation, 3
Barbary, Roman civilisation of,

3

Barlow, Mr., 254 note
Barrois, the, 34
Basingstoke. 157. 159
Bath, Roman road at, 38
Bavai, Roman road at, 17, 32,

33 note, 62 note; walls of, 147
Beare Green, 195
Bearehurst House, 258, 261

205

296

THE STANE STREET

Bean court, 62 note

Beaurepaire Farm, 68 note

Beckley, 25 note

Bellenglise, 98 note

Bent's Brook, 198, 200, 264

Bertram, 143 note

Betchet's Green Copse, 262

Bicester, 24 note, 221 note

Bidford, 186 note

Bignor, the Stane Street at,
128, 180, 181, 191 ; Roman
Villa or Pavement, 233

Bignor Hill crossed by the
Stane Street, 85, 227-34

Bignor Tail Wood, 232

Billingshurst, its position on
the Stane Street, 161, 189,
223, 246

Binche, 216 note

Bishop's Waltham, 35 note

Black Water, the, 68

Bone, 122

Bordeaux, 212

Borough Farm, 244 note

Borough High Street, 281

Borough Hill, 97, 100, 259

Bosham, as a port, 50

Boulogne, 21, 116 note

Bourne, the, 186 note

Bowies' Map, 161 note

Box Hill, 60, 70, 94, 101, 201

Boxgrove, Priory of, 162, 217,
218, 239

Brabant, roads in, 216 note

Brackham Warren, 101

Bradley Farm, 119

Bransbury Common, 186 note

Bristol Channel, the, 35 note

Britain, completely civilised
by Home, 3, 8, 26; Dark
Ages in, 11-13, 31; early
raids on, 9-11; Roman re-
mains in, 8; Roman rule
withdrawn from, 145, 149;
walled cities of, 212

Brittany, Celtic language sur-
vives in, 27

Brookwood, 262

Brussels, 33 note, 175 note

Buckingham, 221 note

Buckinghill Farm, 168, 194,
195, 257, 258

Burford Bridge, continuous
use of, 168; improbability
of Roman camps at, 120 ;
the Stane Street at, 63, 70,
85, 105, 127, 128, 201-3, 269-
72

Burford Lodge, 201

CADWALLA, outlawry and

kingship of, 154
Caerleon, Roman road at, 38
Csesarea, 122
Caistor, camp at, 36 note
Caledonian raids on Britain,

9, 10

Calleva, 68

Cam Brook Valley, 221 note
Cambridge, 125 ; University of ,

146

Camden quoted, 125 note, 271
Canterbury, Danish raid on,

156
Cartwright on Pulborough,

244

Cassel, HiU of, 34
Castre, 175 note, 216 note
Catullus, 55
Celtic dialect replaces Latin,

12,27
Chalons, Roman road to, 17,

34,35

Champagne, roads in, 216 note
Charlemagne, death of, 160

note

Cheam, 108, 134, 136
Chequer's Inn, Rowhook, 192,

253, 254 note
Cherkley Court, 70, 106, 269,

275

Cherwell, the, 84
Chichester, continuity of its

existence, 211

INDEX

297

Chichester, East Gate as a
terminus of the Stane
Street, 40, 48-50, 57, 60,
69, 78, 87, 116, 139, 150, 155,
162, 166, 213, 223, 227;
harbour, 50 ; its military
communication with London,
32; linked with Petworth,
180 ; railway to Pulborough,
237 ; Roman origin of, 152

Chil terns, the, 154

Choisy, 36 note

Cirencester, Roman roads
converging on, 22-4, 38,
67, 186 note, 215

Clapham, 204, 281

Codmore Hill, 245

Colchester, 186 note

Coldharbour, 167, 196, 231

Coldwaltham, 184, 234, 236

Cole, the, 186 note

College of Clerks, at Boxgrove,
217

Colley quoted, 115 note

Coin, the river, 84

Cologne, 17

Compton Verney, 68

Constantino, Emperor, 148

Corbridge, 85 note

Cowley, 25 note

Cranleigh, 254 note

Crepy, 216 note

Cricklade, 23, 82, 186 note, 215

Croydon, road to London from,
108, 109-11, 133, 276

Crusades, the, 15

Cynewulf , death of, 142, 160

DAGLING WORTH, 22

Dallaway, on Alfoldean, 250
note ; on Sea Beach, 222 note

Danes, the, invade Britain, 9,
156-8

Danube, the river, 115 note

Dark Ages, the, 6, 11-13, 31 ;
in Britain, 54, 111 ; condi-
tions of travelling during,

164, 203, 221, 247 ; history
of cities during, 145, 212;
history of the Stane Street
during, 142-8, 154, 160,
164, 175

Day's march for an army, aver-
age, 115, 132, 266

Derwent, the river, 85 note

Doomsday Survey, the, 157, 217

Dorchester on Thames, 24 note

Dorking, 104, 155, 158, 195.
198; deflections of the
Stane Street at, 219, 223,
265 ; probable Roman foun-
dation of, 48, 119, 121-30,
135, 139, 200, 206, 251,
264-9

Dorking Gap crossed by the
Stane Street, 60, 65, 94,
100-4, 110, 252, 259-61

Dover, Straits of, 151

Downs road, the, 272

Duncton Hill, 178, 180

Durdans. the, 277

EAETHAM, the Stane Street

at, 91, 166, 167, 225
East Lavington, 91
Ebble river, the, 35 note
Ebchester, 85 note
Ecouis, 62 note
Elbe, the, 9
Enghien, 216 note
Epsom avoided by the Stane

Street, 36 note, 51, 57, 108,

111, 130, 133, 136, 166, 203,

276, 277

Epsom Downs, 269, 281
Epsom Racecourse, 51, 109,

111
Ermine Street, alignment of,

22, 84, 215; popular term

for roads, 274, 276
Ethelbald victorious at Ockley,

156
Ethelwulf victorious at Ockley,

166

298

THE STAKE STREET

Evenlode, the, 84

Evreux, 216 note

Ewell avoided by the Stane

Street, 136, 203, 276, 277
Ewhurst, 254 note

FARLEIGH HEATH, Roman

camp on, 254
Federates, of the Roman army,

5,6

Fenny Stratford, 187 note
Five Oaks Green, 174, 189,

246-8

Fleury, 63 note
Flint Hill, 200
Folly Farm, 196, 262
Forest, 62 note
Forests in the Middle Ages,

value of, 30
Fosse Bridge, 24
Fosse Way, the, alignment of,

22, 24, 68, 84, 171, 216 note,

221 note
Franco-Prussian war, the, 115

note

Franks, king of the, 6
French engineers, the, 21
Frisian raids on Britain, 9

GAUL, road-making in modern,
20, 21 ; Roman civilisation
in, 3; Roman roads in, 13,
18, 21, 27, 61, 150, 215, 221,
273, 275

Gentleman's Magazine quoted,
244 note

German raids on Britain, 9,
153

German Army, Fifth Corps,
115 note

Germany, its civilisation Ro-
man, 3, 17 ; Roman roads of,
14, 18

Gloucester, Roman road at,
38, 67, 215

Godalming, 191

Goodwood, railway to, 237

Goodwood Hill, 87-91
Goths, king of the, 6
Great Haven, the, 39
Great Wall, the, 27
Grevatt's Wood, 181-3, 232,

234-6

Guildford, 249, 252, 254
Gumber Corner, the Stane

Street at, 65, 78, 166, 180,

213, 224, 228, 229
Gumber Farm, 225 note, 226

HADRIAN, Emperor, 148; his

journeys, 149
Had worth Farm, 232
Hainault, 216 note
Halehouse Farm, 194
Halford, 68
Hall's Bridge, 277
Halnacker, 90, 218
Halnacker Hill, the Stane

Street at, 162, 166, 177, 191,

219-21

Hambridge Bottom, 264
Hannington Hill, 69 note
Hardham, the Stane Street at,

162, 183, 185
Hardham Camp, 116-18, 120.

121 note, 124, 135-9, 229,

236-40
Hardham Priory, 185, 188,

239, 240

Harrison, Mr., 254 note
Hastings, battle of, 217
Hengist and Horsa, legends

of, 11

Henry V., King, 32 note
High Weald, the, 160
Highgate, 22
Highgate Hill, 82
Hippo, 122
Holden Brook Crossing, the,

194, 256, 257
Holmwood, 122, 196, 198,

200

Holmwood Common, 264
Holmwood Station, 262

INDEX

299

Home Street, 244 note
Honeygill Lane, 192, 255
Horsa and Hengist, legends

of, 11

Horsepath, 25 note
Horsham, 189, 191, 198, 223;

antiquity of, 161, 247
Horsham road, the, 174, 246,

248, 252
Humber, the river, 84, 151

note
Huntingdon, 125

IBERIA civilised by Rome, 3
Irish, raids on Britain by the,

9, 10, 153

Isle of Wight, 38, 40
Italy, Roman roads in, 14
" Itinerary of Antoninus," the,

142, 146, 148

JEMAPPES, 33 note
Johannesburg, 115 note
Juniper Hall, the Stane Street

at, 202, 203, 269, 272
Juniper Hill, the Stane Street

at, 60, 70, 102-6, 252, 270-4

KENNET, the, 186 note
Kennington Lane, 204
Kirtlington, 84 note

LA MADELAINE, 216 note

Lambaesis, 122

Laon, 216 note

Laud MS., the, 158 note

Lavington, 180

Leach, the river, 24

Leatherhead, 203

Leatherhead Downs, 65, 66,
133, 169, 202

Leith Hill crossed by the
Stane Street, 57, 58, 63-7,
69, 80, 85, 94-104, 119, 127,
155, 160, 195, 227, 231, 252,
260

Lille, road system of, 33

Loddon, the, 68

Lodgehill, 184

London, Danish raid on, 156,
159 ; during the Dark Ages,
145 ; its communication with
Chichester, 32, 39, 40, 48,
49 ; its early ferries, 51, 151 ;
its importance as a Roman
town, 54

London Bridge as a terminus
of the Stane Street, 50-56,
101, 109-13, 117, 130, 133,
139, 150-2, 206, 266, 269,
274, 280

Long Down, 177

Lyons, 165

MADRID, 230 note
Maestricht, 17
Manchester, 125
Mansiones, or camps, on the

Stane Street, 49, 113-39
Marlborough, John, first Duke

of, 115 note
Marshes, disappearance of

Roman roads in, 170, 173,

186-8, 225, 235, 242
Martin, on Sea Beach, 222

note

Mayflower road, 204
Mersey, bridging of the, 110
Merton, 36 note; death of

Cynewulf at, 142, 160; royal

villa at, 111, 278
Merton Abbey, 134, 162 ; foun-
dation of, 111 ; site of, 136,

278 ; probable site of a

Roman camp, 86, 138, 139,

267, 268, 277-80
Merton Bridge, 267, 281
Merton road, 278
Mickleham Downs, the Stane

Street at, 60
Mickleham Downs House, 52

note, 273, 274
Mickleham Hill, 86, 122
Mickleham Woods, 169

300

THE STANE STREET

Midhurst, 237

Middle Ages, the florescence

of civilisation in, 16, 17, 19,

29, 54

Mill Brook, the, 126
Minnickwood Farm, 259
Mole, the river, crossed by the

Stane Street, 58, 85, 96, 101,

105, 120, 169, 269-71
Monastic establishments on

Roman roads, 15, 160, 162,

185, 217, 224, 239, 279
Monk's Farm, 168, 255, 256
Mons, 216 note
Moorhurst House, 100, 101,

259

Morden Hall, 277
Mountnessing, 186 note

NAPOLEON I., 116 note.
Nation's Farm, 35 note
Netherlands, the, survival of

Teutonic language in, 27
New Place, 97
Newbury, 186 note
Newington Butts, 280
Newington Causeway, 111, 206,

280, 281
Nimy, 33 note
Noddon, the, 68
Nonsuch House, 277
Nonsuch Park, 134
Nore Wood, the, 31, 167, 178,

225, 226
Norfolk, Duke of, undertakes

metalling of Stane Street,

21, 249
Norman Conquest, the, 162,

217
Normandy, roads in, 215, 216

note

North Beach, 216 note
North Downs, the, 102
North German school of his-
tory, 26
Norwich, Roman road to, 36

note

Noviomagus, 108
Noyon, 35 note

OAK POLLARD, 253

Oakdale, 19G note

Oakley, 157, 159

Oakwood Hill, 168, 193, 195.

256
Ockley, battle of, 142, 155-

61; road at, 32, 192-5,

222, 257; synod at, 155
Oise, the river, 36 note, 63 note
Old Sarum, 186 note
Oman, Mr., on the battle of

Ockley, 158 note, 159
Ordnance maps, English and

foreign, 229, 230
Orleans, 165
Ouse, the river, 187 note
Oxford, University of, 146

PARIS, Roman roads to,

32 note, 33 note, 62 note, 63

note, 165, 230 note
Park Street, 248, 252
Parker MSS., the, 158 note
Pebble Lane, 274
Peterborough MSS., the, 158

note
Petworth, 247; linked with

Chichester, 57, 63, 87, 91,

178, 180, 214, 217, 223, 236,

237

Peutinger's Tables, 142, 143
Picardy, roads in, 215, 216 note
Pipp Brook, the, crossed by

the Stane Street, 105, 121,

126, 201
Pirates, raids of, on Britain, 7,

10, 153, 156, 165
Pit Place and Farm, 277
Plevna, 115
Plumpark Hill, 68
Pontoise, 63 note
Port Way, the, 65) note
Portchester, 150
Porton, 186 note

INDEX

301

Portsmouth, its road to London,

52 ; Harbour, 35 note, 40
Pot Kilns Cottages, 198
Pulborough, 247 ; origin of, 48,
243 ; railway to Chichester,
237; Roman remains at, 117,
122 note; Stane Street at,
58, 63-7, 69, 80, 85, 87-93,
96-8, 112, 161, 197
Pulborough Bridge, 213, 222,
227, 237, 241, 270 ; rebuilt,
1829, 243

Pulborough Marsh, 183, 187
Pyrenees, the, Roman roads
over, 17

QUABLEY HILL, 69 note

RADSTOCK Valley, 171

Railways, their effect on roads,
34

Rape of Arundel, Cartwright's,
244

Redfold, 97

Redlands, 262

Reformation, the, its influence
in Britain tends to preserva-
tion of roads, 19

Reigate, 110

Renaissance, the, 19

Rheims, Roman road at, 17, 34

Rhine, roads to the, 34

Richard of Cirencester, Itiner-
ary of, 143 note

Richborough, 151 note

Richmond, 53

Ridge Farm, 184

Ridge Wood, 35 note

Road-making, modern systems
of, 20

Roberts, Field-Marshal Earl,
115 note

"Roman," historical definition
of, 4, 7

Roman camps on the Stane
Street, 113-39

Roman Church, in the Dark

Ages in Britain, 12, 13 ; re-
turns to Britain, 145, 153

Roman coinage, hoards of, 8

Roman foundation of Britain,
3 ; material evidences of, 8,
233, 250, 243

Roman Empire, causes of dis-
integration of, 5, 145 ; its
army, 5, 32 ; its army leaves
Britain, 10, 11 ; its civilising
power in Britain, 3, 8, 26;
decline of, 11-13, 27; its
civilising power throughout
Western Europe, 3, 10, 18,
35, 54 ; traces of, in North
Africa, 122

Roman municipalities, popu-
lation and extent of, 211,
212,

Roman roads, alignment of,
61-66, 71, 77-81, 219, 221,
260; historical significance
of, 15-18, 36 ; inexplicable
gaps in, 273 ; monastic estab-
lishments on, 15, 160, 162,
185, 217, 224, 239, 279;
repaired in the Dark Ages, 7

Roman roads in Britain, causes
of decay of, 28-36, 174-207,
223, 224; civil uses of, 37,
175; London Bridge a
terminus of, 53-6 ; military
use of, 36, 37, 43, 47, 175;
modified alignment of, 22-
7, 77-85; preservation of, 8,
13, 14, 18-22, 36, 125

Roman roads in Gaul, 13, 18,
21, 27, 61, 190

Roman roads in Germany, 14,
18

Roman roads in Italy, 14

Roman roads in Western
Europe, decay of, 35

Roman Wood, 253

Roman's Corner, 188

Roman's Gate, 191, 192, 262

Rome, 165

302

THE STANE STREET

Romford, 186 note
Rose Hill, Dorking, 127, 200
Rowhook, 167, 168, 192, 252-6
Rother, the river, avoided by

the Stane Street, 87, 90, 92,

214

Rouen, 62 note, 63 note
Ruckman's Farm, 192
Rudgwick, 256
Rustow quoted, 115
Ryefield Copse, 100, 261, 262

ST. AUGUSTINE, his mission to

Britain, 12, 122, 154
St. Clair's Church, 282
St. Germanus in Britain, 12
St. Gervais, 62 note
St. Martha's Chapel, 254 note
St. Wilfrid, his mission to

Britain, 154

Salisbury, 35 note, 69 note
Schellendorf quoted, 115 note
Sea Beach, 166, 218, 224;

origin of name, 222
Selsey, 40, 222
Servile state, Roman army

transformed by, 5
Shoreham, 109
Silchester, its importance as a

Roman town, 147 ; Roman

remains at, 211 note; Roman

road at, 38, 67, 68, 81, 159,

186 note
Sisters' Inn, 23
Slinfold, the Stane Street at,

21, 189, 248-250
Smith, Roach, quoted, 277 note
Smoke signals, 79
Soissons, 35 note
Somme, valley of the, 21, 32
South Downs, the, crossed by

the Stane Street, 87, 153,

191, 195, 218-27
South Holmwood, 262
Southampton Water, 40, 50
Southwark, 54, 111; Town

Hall, 281 note

Spain, Roman roads in, 17, 27

Staines, bridge at, 52, 53 ;
Roman road to, 30, 243 note

Stane Street, the, alignment of,
28, 38, 39, 49, 57, 60-86,
151, 213, 227-9, 236, 242,
244, 259, 262, 269-75,
282

(1) Between Chichester and
Pulborough, 58, 63-6, 69,
87-93, 181-4, 213-44 ; (2) Be-
tween Pulborough and Leith
Hill, 58, 63-5, 67, 80, 93-100,
161, 167, 206, 244-66; (3)
Between Leith Hill and Jum-
per Hill, 58, 60, 63, 100-5,
202, 260 ; (4) Between Juni-
per Hill and London Bridge,
58, 63, 106-13, 151, 272-82

Stane Street, the, causes of de-
cay of, 32,36,49, 170, 279;
date of its construction, 149-
52 ; disappears in marsh-
land, 170, 173, 186-8, 225,
235, 242; divergence of
modern roads from, 49,
163-207, 219, 260; during
the Dark Ages, 142-8, 152,
154, 188, 214, 247 ; falls into
disuse, 152-4, 160-3, 170,
174, 222; gap between
Af oldean Bridge and Ockley,
161 ; gap between Epsom
and Merton, 36 note, 111 ;
geological characteristics of,
40-2, 173, 178, 181, 203,222,
224, 231, 234, 250 ; its his-
torical character, 49, 140-62;
its lack of Roman towns, 47,
150; its military character,
40-3, 47-9, 52, 113-15, 124,
150, 176, 202, 224, 246; its
termini, 49, 56; lack of direct
record of, 142-9, 154, 162;
metalled between Slinfold
and Alf oldean Bridge, 21,
167, 248, 249-52; Roman

INDEX

303

camps on, 113-39, 229, 230-
40, 249 54, 266 ; Roman road
branching from, 253

Stanford, 68

Stockwell, 204

Stony Stratford, 187 note

Stowe Park, 68

Stratford, 68, 84

Stratton, 186 note, 215

Stratton St. Margaret, 23

Streatham, 280

Strettington,217, 218

Stretton, 84

Summer's Place, 246

Surrey Hills, the, 110

Sussex Archaeological Journal
quoted, 222 note, 226 note,
277 note

Sussex, kingdom of, 32 ; sea-
plain of, 153, 154, 169, 223

Sutton, 136

Swindon, 186 note

TEST River, the, 186 note
Tetbury, Roman road at, 22,

24
Teutonic dialect replaces Latin,

12,27
Thames, the river, crossed by

Roman roads, 151 note, 215 ;

fords and ferries over, 55
Thanet, 151 note, 156
Thirty Acres Barn, 108, 109, 130,

276

Timgad, 122
Tingewick, 221 note
Todhurst Farm, 97, 98, 245
Tooting High Street, 203, 204,

278

Toul, 17
Towcester, 68
Tower Hill, 104, 200, 264
Travel, local and national, 171,

184, 202, 223, 224
Treves, Roman road at, 17, 36

note %

Turkish Army, the, 115 note

Turner, J. M. W., 50
Turnpike roads, 189
Tyne, the river, 85 note
Tyrrell's Court, 52
Tyrrell's Wood, 275

UNIVERSITIES, influence of
in Roman research, 145 9,
165

Upwaltham, 178, 180

Utrecht, an outpost of the
Roman Empire, 10, 17, 32

VANDALS, their raids on Brit-
ain, 10

Verdun, 17

Vernand, 98 note

Victoria County History, the,
quoted, 54 note

Voyennes, 32 note

WALTHAM-SINGLETON Valley,

90
Wandle, the river, crossed by

the Stane Street, 86. 110,

134, 138, 139, 151, 202, 203,

267-9, 276, 277, 281
Warehead Farm, 218
Warnham, 256
Warren's Barn, 166
Waterland Farm, 253
Watersfield, 183, 184, 235
Water Stratford, 186 note, 221

note
Watling Street, the, 175, 221

note; alignment of, 84, 163
Weald, the Sussex, 41, 90, 153,

160, 161, 173, 191, 195, 223

224, 234, 247, 249, 261
Weser, the, 9
Wessex, mission to, 145
Westburton, 232
West Hampnett, its position

on the Stane Street, 177,

216, 218

West Hill House, 277
Wey, the river, 254 note

304

THE STANE STREET

White's Gill, 192

William strip Park, 23

Winchester, Roman road from,
35 note, 40, 52, 68, 150, 156,
159, 186 note; walls of , 147

Windrush, the, 84

Windsor, William I. at, 30
Winterfold, 254 note
Worsfold, Mr., 254 note
Worting, 68 note

YEO, the river, 84

THE END

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